


The Sura Chapters

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Outlands [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Fish out of Water, M/M, cultures back in antiquity did not know about political correctness, history put through a blender, passing mention of underage sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-04 02:56:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13355022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: In one way or another, Ryou has not stopped running ever since he stumbled through the dimensions. He's been beaten up, fallen off a horse (multiple times), ended up in the middle of a war and in Darius's bed, got dragged in front of Leyam, King of Assyria, who gracefully thanked him for his assistance - the latter possibly being the more terrifying of all those experiences.But now he's in the royal city of Sura and it's time tostop. Stop running, stop fighting, stop getting into confusing situations....Two out of three ain't so bad.





	1. The Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is situated literally _minutes_ after the end of the Outlands series. It's the first of several loosely connected stories about Ryou finding his way around Darius's home city of Sura. 
> 
> By the way, this chapter is about sex. A lot of sex. Pretty much exclusively about sex.

The night was soft on Ryou's skin as he leaned against the windowsill. He closed his eyes to appreciate the faint breeze touching his face, but opened them again when he felt the weight of Darius's gaze on his features. 

"Yes?" 

Darius still had one elbow planted on the stone balustrade, but he'd turned away from the moonlit gardens and was giving Ryou a long, slow scrutiny from head to toe. 

"Do I look that strange to you?" Ryou asked dryly, shrugging his shoulders against the brocaded tunic that'd been nipped and tucked to fit him as rigorously as a tailored business suit.

"Strange? Strange. Strange, he says." Darius glanced at the ceiling and shook his head as if exchanging a few exasperated comments with the god or goddess who might be presiding over this moment. "Anyway," he said, pushing away from the window with the air of one changing the direction of the conversation, "the master of the Noble Quarters asked me to extend his most humble pardons. He wasn't expecting me to bring a guest. The other apartments aren't aired. He told me he'll have a room ready for you as soon as possible."

"A room?" Ryou asked, surprised, trailing after Darius. 

Darius paused in the act of jerking off the black leather collar around his throat. "You thought you'd stay here?" he asked with a wry smile.

I guess I'm not, Ryou concluded. What was this? He and Darius had been sharing a bed for weeks now. They'd shared one in full sight of fourteen of his men. Ryou hadn't really thought of where he'd be by this time tomorrow, since this had been changing every day since he'd first arrived in the Outlands, but he'd assumed there would be no problem continuing the accommodation he and Darius had struck up while on the road. Was it because they were now in Darius's home? Ryou was already struggling to figure out where and how he was going to fit into this society; he'd assumed he knew where he fit into this relationship at least. Well, mostly.

"I'm sorry, I did not mean to impose," he said neutrally to see if that would get him more information, while deep inside he wondered if he really wanted any...

Darius gave him a puzzled look. "Impose? I invited you. I'm the one who should have asked the man to get you a room ready right from the start, blame me if you must."

"It's fine," said Ryou automatically. 

"The day you stop saying 'fine' will be the day the stars fall out of the sky," Daris said under his breath, tossing his belt over a nearby low chair. 

"When did you say he'll have a room ready?"

"No idea. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow if they have to move furniture into it. Most of these other rooms have been unused for years."

"I see." Ryou gave the nearby bed a glance. It looked both big and comfortable, and maybe he'd been an idiot to assume he'd be enjoying it. "In that case, may I sleep here tonight?" 

"Oh, now you're just teasing," growled Darius.

"Wh-" was all that Ryou had time to say before he was caught, overbalanced and pinned to the bed in a screech of wood and a twang of rope.

A mouth locked onto his throat. Ryou was paralyzed by surprise for a short moment, but then he relaxed, welcoming the sudden contact, the weight holding him down. Things were whirling too fast to grasp: this unknown civilization, Sura, Leyam, the royal court with all its currents and shoals, Darius and his hurry to get Ryou out of his room...This at least Ryou could touch and hold, he knew what this was. 

Darius broke the kiss, his mouth hovering over Ryou's, little caresses of air. "'May I sleep here tonight', I swear..."

The question hadn't been meant as funny or coy, but Ryou liked this mood better than the one he'd been in previously, so he didn't mention it. 

Darius raised himself up to look down at Ryou sprawled beneath him. "Those clothes...They befit you as they would an Assyrian prince, but it's you in them, like something out of a tale, eyes like almonds, skin like gold...It's exciting." Ryou could see that excitement tenting the dark red tunic his lover wore. Ryou's blood had also pulsed at his words, at the heat of his gaze. Darius's hand hovered, touched the brocade on Ryou's chest....a gesture built around a little pause as if waiting for a comment. Ryou wouldn't know what to say - 'thanks' sounded lame - so he reached up and touched Darius's lips. 

A faint frown curled Darius's brow. He brushed past Ryou's fingers to kiss the soft part of the wrist. Those lips, hard yet sensual...Ryou's skin tingled at the memory of that mouth. It just so happened that the two of them were finally somewhere private, did not expect to travel tomorrow, and, an important yet usually neglected detail for Ryou, they were both properly bathed; maybe now they could finally take a little time to explore each other properly. For starters, Ryou hoped his lover would help him chase away this awful tension, this uncertainty, hunt it down with his fingertips and wipe it out.

As if guessing Ryou's needs, a hand fastened on his thigh, pressing the skin beneath the layers of cloth. An equally rough kiss traveled from Ryou's cheek towards his mouth. It was harder than before, and Ryou took it in. 

Another pause. Darius's breath was harsher now, his mouth an inch from Ryou's. Ryou had never figured out how much kissing figured in Outland foreplay. The first time they'd fallen into bed, Darius had only briefly touched his mouth, hard and without lingering. He'd been a little surprised at letting tongues come into play. And it had been abundantly clear that kissing in view of others was not acceptable. 

Ryou brushed the lips near his with his mouth and then leaned back to see what was expected of him.

From this angle, he could see the length of his lover's body by tilting his head. No armor to get through this time. He reached up towards Darius's mouth with his fingers- a faint pull back made him hesitate. Apparently that wasn't wanted right now. Ryou remembered Darius thumbing his lips open back in Essin, the memory seared into his dream skin many nights in his sleep. But maybe he wasn't supposed to do it to Darius for some reason. Ryou let his hand fall back, waiting for a cue. He'd...not really wanted to have to think about this too hard tonight. Not with everything else going on. 

There was definitely something off about the lack of motion. Ryou opened his mouth-

"What's wrong?" Darius asked, effectively beating Ryou to the punch line. 

The words 'you tell me' wobbled on Ryou's tongue, but he wasn't sure- had he been doing something wrong? He hadn't been doing anything, nothing more than he'd done the first two times they'd made love, why-

Darius's eyes were narrowed. "I'm not blood-drunk this time, but you're still acting like you did back in Essin. After the heat of battle that was understandable, but now I feel like I'm raping you. Do you not want this?"

" _Huh?_ No! I mean, I do want-"

"Yeah, but you just don't want it like _this_ ," said Darius, jerking his chin at Ryou beneath him, his lips curved in a jagged smile. "Looks like I should have made myself clearer three nights ago. I do not go down on my knees every time, not by your wish nor any man's. Get used to it."

Ryou stared at him, and then he closed his open mouth with a click and gave his head a shake. "Okay, that's it. Time out."

"Huh?"

"Darius, let me get up please."

Darius sat up and removed his hands in an exaggerated gesture. 

Ryou shoved up his glasses and straightened himself out. "Let's get one thing straight. I don't know how things work in Assyria. For men together, I mean. So we need to take a few minutes to discuss what we expect of this." And if it ruined the mood, so be it. Ryou's inner control freak was only going to accept so much before it had conniptions. 

"Don't expect much." Darius was looking at him with that unblinking, feral gaze that reminded Ryou of his lover's nickname. "I told you right from the start that I'm not to be tamed. I was never an eromenos- and I'm certainly not going to be one now, I'm too old. Hell, I was _born_ too old."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. You may be a better man than me in more than years, but fuck, I was never and never will be a bloody puppy to mentor."

A tense little silence ensued.

Finally Darius looked away from Ryou's steady, unrelenting gaze. "I take it that wasn't what you meant," he concluded in a grumble. 

"Thank you," Ryou said sardonically. "Took the words right out of my mouth. Now can you explain what you just said? Without the colloquialisms and the swearing this time?"

"You really don't have a clue what I'm talking about?"

"No, I don't, Darius, that's why we're having this conversation. Maybe everyone from here to the Roman Empire knows what you're talking about, but I _don't_."

Darius rubbed his face, and then to Ryou's relief his mouth twisted upward in a ghost of humor. "It's your own fault, you know; you just...you stand imperturbable and calm, watching and understand things about our countries that most people who live here their whole lives never considered. I've had to damn well break my back to get a rise out of you from day one, and the only time I caught you completely off guard was with Leyam, who'd give All-Seeing Enlil a start. It's funny, but it's almost to the point where I forget where you come from at times. Ishhara knows I've lain with people from all over the Outlands, I know the various customs and so do my bed mates. I never had someone who didn't at least know what I was talking about. I should have remembered that. My apologies."

Ryou, who knew full well that Darius's apologies were few, far between and always very serious, nodded in acceptance. "Now, can you tell me more about it?" 

Darius scratched his beard, looking puzzled at having to explain something that everybody must know about. Bye-bye mood, though Ryou morosely, but this was undoubtedly for the best. 

"You really don't know what an eromenos is? Okay," Darius added when Ryou rolled his eyes, "then I'll start with that. Hm. Well, it's originally a Greek thing, though it's spread. The Greeks were the standard of civilization around here for a long time. But the erastes tradition wasn't as widespread as their culture, it's specific to certain city states. Boys need education, see, so they are approached by a mentor. The erastes teaches them their duties and responsibilities as men, as defenders of their country, and also the arts of courting and the bedchamber."

"Oh, I see. That's not that different from the way we used to do it not that long ago," said Ryou, polishing his glasses, smudged by an earlier brush against Darius's cheek, on the edge of the cover. "In our warrior tradition, a younger man in training served a more experienced older warrior, who in turn taught him to be a man, and occasionally this kind of bond was known to lead to-" But then a not-insignificant difference in wording suddenly struck Ryou. "You meant young man, right? You said boy."

"Not sure which is which in your country," Darius said with a shrug. "Eromenoi are usually courted by their mentors when they're twelve."

"...Twelve?"

"Yes." Darius gave him a savvy look. "I take it that's not how you do things Inlands."

"But-... _Twelve?!_ "

"Don't shout at me, I never did it." 

Ryou - who had not been shouting - lowered his volume a handful of decibels back to its usual levels. "No, that's not what we do back home. To start with, that'd be illegal."

"Sometimes the boys are older. But when they're sixteen, they leave their mentor and go to war - or plough a field or build a house or screw a girl, depending on which state they're from - and when they're twenty, they cut their hair, grow a beard and then it's their turn to educate another."

"This is seen as normal?"

Darius looked puzzled. "It's Greek."

"So it's not Assyrian," said Ryou, remembering Leyam's act with Nicodeme. He'd not known what to think about that - correction, he'd known exactly what to think about it, but had refused to believe it of someone Darius respected. Then it'd become obvious Nicodeme was a bodyguard, not a bed toy, and Ryou had packed away the whole idea with some relief.

"It's done here too. Not often, though. It's-...only in certain cases." Darius was still fishing around to put into words for this poor bewildered foreigner concepts which to him were as plain as rain and sunshine. "Mainly it's painted men and those who lay with them who do that. It stays in its own circle."

"Painted men?"

"You know, the men who dress and act like women. Not like my brother," Darius added dryly before Ryou could stick his sandal in his mouth. "I know what it looks like, but Leyam does not actually sleep with men. Or boys. Hell, he doesn't sleep with anybody, he kicks whoever shared his bed out the minute he's done with them. He's- well, he's fine, he just doesn't like to have anyone else in the bed with him," Darius said abruptly as if Ryou might find that weird and comment on it.

Ryou was quite ready to avoid the subject of Leyam tonight. That was a fraught discussion for another day. "Darius, why did you assume I wanted you to be-...er, that? You're a grown man."

"I know, that's why I was pissed off."

"Yes, but why did you think I had that in mind in the first place? There's only four years difference between us. Even back in my country at an era where younger and older might signify, that difference is too negligible to count at our age. Why did you think I wanted you to...?"

Darius frowned as if couldn't quite figure that out himself. He was silent a moment, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blindly out the window. Ryou got a little distracted by the thought that that very same window did not have a pane, that their apartment was only one floor up and that the guards who'd been warbling away at the maids earlier might have a patrol route that took them nearby. 

Darius reached out blindly until his fingers brushed Ryou's face. "Maybe...I feel at times as if I can't quite...touch you. You're here, yet a part of you is just out of my reach. It's a feeling I only ever had with-...though it's not really- never mind. It's completely different." He turned on the bed to look Ryou in the eye, shedding that odd moment. "The erastae- that's the men who court the boys - that's only in some city states, as I said. But what is widespread is the Greek ideal of what a man should be, what a lover should be. A true man should not be ruled by his appetites, not even in bed. Moderation, self-discipline, asceticism even, is the Greek ideal. That's why I thought you were trying to tell me something earlier, when you lay there like a stump. Because you have to grant me, when it comes to being all composed and reserved, you and I are night and day."

"Oh, is that why you said back at Essin that you're not an ideal lover?"

"Yeah, I've had a few lectures from my brother and others on my lack of manners, refinement and control of my passions. This was back when I was younger, mind you. I've grown some since. Now I don't care as much: not about Ishhara's little games, and not about the fucking Greek ideal either. Nine years of a murderous campaign have taught me that there's better reasons to fight a man than over something so small as who beds who, what with all the other ways there are to die. They've also taught me that when the fighting is over, you tell the Greek Ideal to go screw itself, get drunk, grab the nearest body available - drunk, horny and willing too - and drag him into bed. Assuming we make it that far," Darius added with a hard leer. "The whole restraint and temperance thing...feh. Truth be told, the Greeks themselves are divided in what they believe is ideal. I gave you the general notion everybody has of them, but I met a lot of Greeks who told me that was donkey balls, and that they'd not recognize as a Greek, or even a man, some boring piss of vinegar who wouldn't want to drink himself into bed with a comely person of whatever the age. The Greeks I knew weren't always very restrained, that's for sure. I told you I was good looking when I was a boy, right? Back when I first led a command in the Alliance, learning the trade of leadership from Terentius, I had to break a few Greek bones when some guys didn't understand that an Assyrian youth did not appreciate their courting."

Cross cultural clashes at their finest, thought Ryou, rubbing his forehead. At least Darius seemed to find the memory of those episodes amusing rather than unpleasant. 

"That was rare, though. The Greeks stick to defending their homelands tooth and nail. Those who leave are mercenaries who form their own units. By contrast, most of the Hounds are Ionian. Unlike the Greek erastae, Ionians consider _this_ to be a man's business, not a boy's," said Darius, his fingers wandering down Ryou's cheek and throat in a very exact illustration of what he meant by 'this'. "For them, it's all very serious. In fact the Tibans, Doceans and Kaliceans build their army around this notion. Did you see Dionysodoros and Bareil?"

"Er, yes," said Ryou, unsettled. He'd not been sure from the start whether there was anything sexual about that, and now that he knew them both, he wasn't sure he wanted to find out anything that'd upset him. Bareil was barely sixteen. 

"Dio is Ionian, from Kalicee. One of many refugees from that city after the plague and then the war. The Kaliceans are proponents of that idea. It's what you said earlier, the older warrior takes care of the younger, educates him. It means their cadets are protected and learn their trade damn well. In counterpart, the older warrior would let himself get chopped up on the spot rather than show cowardice in battle to his younger friend. It strengthens the bonds between the men and makes them fight like lions. Even the triarii are cautious when they attack a Tiban phalanx. But unity is considered important, so Tibans don't mix with the rest of the Alliance troops. Only some career officers practice it in our armies. Bareil is the son of a scribe, he can read and write, he's got both guts and a good brain. He'll be a fine commander of men one day. Dio took him under his wing last year the way someone once did with him. When Bareil is old enough to grow a beard and take a command of his own, he'll do the same to another youngster, assuming he can find one with promise."

"But from what you say, they also sleep together, right?"

"Oh all the time. Didn't you see them on the road? Especially when it's cold-"

Ryou rolled his eyes, caught the finger that was now toying with the fastenings of his surcoat, lifted it to his mouth and ran his lips up to the tip. "I meant like _this_ , as you put it so well."

Darius looked like he'd lost the thread of the conversation for a minute. "Huh...Dio and Bareil...? Oh yeah, they've been known to. When they're not both busy chasing tits."

Rather offhand, then, concluded Ryou. The relationship would be mainly about friendship, co-reliance and education, while sex was just thrown in as an occasional pleasant bonus. 

"Ryou, just so you know," said Darius, then he cleared his throat. His eyes were still fixed, unblinking, on the hand Ryou was holding captive. "When you do that- something like that, with your mouth, that's a suggestion. Hell, in Ionian terms, that's as good as a promise."

Ryou glanced from the fingers he was holding to Darius's face. "It's wrong?"

"Wrong?" echoed Darius as if he suspected Ryou was making fun of him, then he caught himself. "No, no, not wrong at all, but for the Ionians and also Aksumite and just about anybody else when you do it like _that_ , it means you're suggesting you're going to go down on me."

"Oh, so that's why earlier when I reached for your mouth, you thought I was asking you to-...I see."

"Yeah."

"Well," said Ryou, lips moving against the callused skin as he spoke, "just to set the record straight, I do not expect you to be the one to get down on your knees each time, as you put it. I don't mind doing my share." 

"Is that so," said Darius, his voice lower and a little rough, eyes still fixed on Ryou's mouth while his hand slowly moved to cup Ryou's chin. A little smile tugged Ryou's lips. Who said the mood was gone...?

But then his reason kicked in again, and before his libido could tackle it to the ground it prompted him to ask, "But didn't you touch me like that at Essin? Was that the same thing?"

"Hmm? No, I wasn’t thinking about that back then. I just did it. Spur of the moment. Then all I was thinking was that it was the most erotic thing I'd seen, and I've seem the dancers of Sarsareen go at it in public, so I know what I'm talking about." Darius's voice was still husky. Then he seemed to come back to himself and remember his duty as illuminator of lost and confused Inlanders. He dutifully removed his hand and used his fingers to run through a mental list instead. 

"Let me see, Eratery, Kaimé, Halicarnace- There's a lot of boy-lover states and cities out there, I can't list them all. Kaliceans, Doceans and Tibans pair off according to older and younger as well, though a man has to be fourteen before he can join their armies, which is where such bonds mostly stay. Then there's a lot of lesser known customs that I only came to know when I paid my respect to Ishhara. For instance, I knew a man from Xepomeles - Zozimos, he'd been named after the hero of his city. I met him back during the campaign of Ryii. He was only one year younger than I, but thought that because I was more elevated in rank, he had to act like a boy. The damn bugger was even bigger than I was, and built like a fucking rock, and- well, I try to remember him for his friendship, not for the one time we ended up in the bedrolls, that's too excruciating. Then there was- damn, I can't remember half their names. Oh, there was that guy from Thezali we called Beauty because he was anything but. He would always say it had to be the smallest man who gave way, the way nature makes the female smaller than the male. He was almost as tall as Zozimos had been, so no fucking wonder he believed that, but he swore that's how they did it in his city. We loved to bug him by pointing out that female spiders are bigger and female lions considerably more dangerous, but he stuck to his argument. Greeks, and those who think themselves Greek, tend to have very rigid ideas. Thermopilyans, Zoreans, Olympians- oh, and that one lay I had who was from Athens the New and who I do have to admit was rather awe-inspiring, though fortunately he was sixteen for my twenty three so no struggles there. Yeah, wherever they hail from, Greeks are all the same, it's just the details that change. The Ionians tend to think of sex between men as a way of forming a bond, so at least there's not all that black and white divisions. But then again, they tend to take it a little too seriously. Inder help me, I shared a cup of wine, a bowl of olives and a bed with a man from Leossia, and found out the next morning that I was on course to forming a lifelong commitment with the ass. I did keep him around for awhile. He was a good man, for all his funny ideas. He could throw a spear further than I've seen anyone throw it since. But tell you the truth, I was rather glad when he found out his wife had gotten pregnant on his last leave and this meant he had to go home and leave me before things went too far. He cried. I swear. I shouldn't speak badly of him, though, he was killed in the last thrust of the Eightieth Legion into Leossia, defending his home; a good death all in all. Melliod was his name, Melliod. All the Ionians I knew had different customs. I could recount dozens. And of course there's countries further afield where they'll go and stone you for taking a man to your bed, like Ras Dal Aran. 

"But I'm wandering. What those donkey-fuckers do is their own business, and if I don't like it, I'll go sleep with my own kind. Assyrians are as split as the Ionians, mind you. Assyria is made up of Old Assyrians, Persians, a few Babylonian tribes, some Greek and Ionian regions and others. Most Assyrians sleep only with eunuchs, or men who might as well be, but there are plenty who are of my mind in the matter. We usually take after some Ionian tradition or other. The Persians do tend to be a bit decadent about it, you know, hareems and toys of different genders for the rich and powerful. The only men Babylonians sleep with are whores. The men from Carrat have this weird idea that-...never mind. But the ones I feel the greatest kinship with were the men from Aksum, as a whole. Especially those from the north. There's just, how can I say it, no fuss, no question. They call themselves shield brothers. There's no notion of one being lesser and the other greater, no cares for age- well, within limits, nine years being the most. In the capital and in the province of Diar-Arorot, it's actually illegal for a man to take a lover nine years younger, and that goes for women too. Oh, and it's a deep shame to fight another man over a third, that's their custom. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but they consider it a disgrace. A guy I knew from the city of Haxosterex had a saying for that, the pervert: if both men want him, then it's time to share, he'd say." Darius scoffed as if the idea was shocking in an amusing way. 

Ryou had built his career on facts and numbers, and if there was one thing he'd known from day one, it was to be absolutely sure of them. Cross-reference was his motto. In this world, however, such concept was unknown. Darius did not have any encyclopedias, or even the dubious veracity of the internet; he'd never picked up a newspaper, books were rare here - most people could not read or write anyway - and stories changed with every telling. Darius's view of the world was strictly divided between those facts which immediately surrounded him and affected his unit and his country, and then everything beyond which existed in some woolly limbo full of weird, interesting and totally unverifiable stories. This way of thinking drove Ryou ever so slightly crazy, which was why he'd learned to distinguish when Darius was talking of one or the other.

...What he was talking about right now had a feeling of being the former. It sounded like facts he knew about intimately. Intimately being the key. "...Um, Darius," he said, while Darius was still shaking his head at the notion of threesomes, "I suppose all this is common knowledge?"

"Hmm? I don't know about common, most people do not travel and only know such things through hearsay, if at all," said Darius, his eyes on the finger he'd sloooowly wound around the gold and brown ropes of Ryou's surcoat. "But leading the Hounds, and fighting with the Alliance army all over this region of the Outlands, I got the chance to gather all this first hand."

"All of it?" were the words that escaped Ryou's throat before he could constrict it.

"Yeah. What- oh, _what_ are you thinking?" Darius burst out laughing, his hand dropping away. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to imply- I didn't mean to offend."

"Offend? I'm flattered!" Darius had to lean back against the bed he was laughing so hard. It broke that hard set of his eyes into a heap of smile lines, it also showed the gap of two missing upper back teeth on the left which Darius had said he'd lost from infection when he was younger. Laughing like that was something that Ryou thought Darius should do more often, because it suited him.

He finally stopped with a gasp, and spoke with a chuckle still running through his words. "By my father's blood and seed, man, I may have embraced many in my life, but I also had to fight a lot, and, you know, sleep. And eat. And tie my sandals and other sundries. Besides, if I'd spent that much time in Ishhara's pursuits, Leyam would have neutered me long ago. No, when I said I got it first hand, I meant talking to my men or my friends on those long cold nights when swapping such tales was the next best thing to having a bed warmer, and the only thing keeping us from freezing our cocks off. Don't ask me to tell you what nations I have known in the ways of the flesh, though, because damned if I remember. I was drunk half the time too, I think I mentioned."

"Were they all younger?"

That stopped the last few ripples of laughter. Darius's eyes flickered towards the corner of the room as if he expected to find something or someone there. "Yeah, as it happens. Not counting women - who cares about them - I've only had two lovers who were older than me, and you're one of them."

Ryou hadn't thought Darius was the kind to be the younger partner in the Greek sense, or even the Japanese one. He opened his mouth around a question starting with 'Who' when Darius turned towards him briskly. "And you?"

"Me? I've had lovers who were older and younger. Who was it-"

"Really? But that's not what I meant. How is it in your country?"

...Okay, so apparently the other older lover was not a subject that was going to be discussed tonight, if ever. Ryou forced himself to drop it with some effort, and scrubbed his hair as if that could help massage his thoughts into some order. "In my country, it's...complicated."

"Everything is complicated where you come from. You're even worse than the Ionians."

"You may be right. It's complicated because our society has been changing rapidly these past hundred years. In old times, we were more like the Kaliceans, if I understood you right. We also had our, ah, painted men and those who paired up with them. They were frequently prostitutes back then, though not always. Now it's not quite so defined. As for the way two men behave together, age is frequently a factor, yes, if all else is equal, which it rarely is. Experience is more important, really, some guys can hit forty before they're ready to come out of-...um, decide they might want to sleep with their own gender. If age and experience are on par, then it's up to individual preference. Most men know quite soon if they prefer to be passive or active as a rule. Some are still open to the idea of switching on occasion, or at least they say they are, though the few tachi I'm acquainted with would simply lead from the bottom-"

"Wait, switching what?" asked Darius, mystified.

"Roles. Take turns being passive and active, I mean."

"Passive...? Active? I don't understand. You're not talking the more experienced and less, here, right?"

"Oh." It was Ryou's turn to scratch his head and ponder explaining something that was hard to properly put into words. "I suppose you could say we match the way men and women behave together. I don't mean one of the male partners acts womanly," Ryou added quickly, knowing Darius's stellar opinion of women.

Darius snorted as if that'd been abundantly obvious from the start.

"But in bed, sometimes even in the relationship, at least to start with, one man will be the one to-" Ryou paused, because the instinctive words - attack and surrender - would give entirely the wrong idea. "One will engage, the other accept. The former will then lead. Most times. While the one who accepted - the woman in normal relations - receives that affection and the pleasure. Is taken care of, in a way, doesn't have to do anything. This is just generalizations, it depends on each person really, but it's the...what you were saying about the Greeks, the overall image we have of relationships. This is true only for my country, I understand that other countries are different, and in some instances it's still illegal I believe. I'm not all that sure, really, I've not traveled very far. Until now," Ryou added with a pale attempt at humor. 

Darius's eyes narrowed. "I think I'm starting to get it. This is what you were doing. This is what men do in your country? One just lies there?"

"...Not quite that passive, necessarily. I...it's been a long day, and I...wasn't sure what you expected of me tonight, once things got off on the wrong footing," Ryou admitted. Which was sugarcoating the truth somewhat. In reality, Leyam had frightened him earlier, and Ryou had realized how complicated and potentially risky his future could be now that he was firmly committed to staying in these very foreign lands. In these dangerous waters, Darius was the only rock he had and for an instant he'd thought it'd shifted, and so he'd done what he instinctively thought was right: lain back and waited for an indication of what he was supposed to do. Ryou frowned, not liking that on several levels, only one of which was a tachi's automatic reaction to the very idea he could turn pliant and surrender up control like that. 

Darius chewed that over, then nodded to himself, leaned over and captured Ryou's mouth with a harsh kiss, his hand gripping the back of Ryou's head. Then he tore away and whispered in Ryou's ear, "You are the only man I will say this to, but if I make you feel that uncertain again, punch me, call me an ass and remind me of this conversation."

Ryou smiled, obscurely relieved. He'd not wanted to feel like he had before, not with this man. "No need for violence, but I would like to teach you two little words," he whispered into Darius's ear, cheek brushing cheek.

"Restraint and courtesy?" Darius asked with a touch of irony. 

"No. Culture gap." He kissed his lover before the latter could ask what that meant. There'd be time to learn. 

The kiss turned into a muddle of rough caresses and a roll onto the bed. Ryou looped an arm around strong shoulders, a hand tangling in brown hair for the pleasure of hearing the disks clink. He felt more than heard a subvocal hmm of pleasure, so he let his fingers play, tousling the hair and gripping the hard cords of the neck. Darius's strong fingers stroked down Ryou's chest, dragging the tight linen across the latter's skin until he reached Ryou's thigh. He'd hooked the loop of one of the brown and gold cords with his fingers on the way, pulling the knot loose. The other fastening was somehow already undone, and Ryou hadn’t even noticed. Then Darius's hand rose up between Ryou's legs, making Ryou tense and swallow a gasp. 

...Something even deeper inside burned under the touch; a fire that'd sparked into life the very first time he'd seen Darius smile, back when the guy was just a crazy foreigner killing monsters with a sword. It scared him at times, to feel this deeply about this man, this stranger from out of an obscure history book, whose values were so different...but then Darius would reach out with those blunt words and warm look that Ryou was one of the very few privileged to know, and Ryou would remember why the fire kept burning hotter and hotter...

"So," whispered Darius against Ryou's collarbone. "This passive stuff...you really like that?"

Ryou ummmed, not sure he wanted to go into his past on that score. For starters, despite Darius's words just before, it still might queer this hot, fluttering moment if Ryou admitted that he'd always been on top until now, and a control freak specimen at that. He also didn't want to talk about his streams of empty relationships and practically-whores in this night they were sharing. Darius didn't fit that mold. Hell, he exploded it. What the two of them shared had nothing to do with anything Ryou had ever known before, in bed or out of it.

"Because I can't imagine you like that at all," said Darius.

"I don't think it really applies to us," admitted Ryou, who had to agree he did not like to think of himself on the bottom, but who could not imagine Darius in that position either. At all. 

"You know," said Darius into Ryou's neck, beard prickling the skin. "I told you the best time I had was with the men of Aksum, right? Two men, two warriors of equal ages with the same kind of metal in their hearts, and nothing to prove except in a friendly wrestling match beforehand. Two lions, they call those men."

"You're not asking me to wrestle, I hope...So what you're saying is, ah, both of us would be active?"

"That's the idea."

"...How does that work? Don't you get your hands mixed up, or bump into each other?"

"Only on purpose," said Darius with a leer in his voice.

"Oh. Well, looks like you have something to teach me, then."

Darius looked at him from the corner of his eye, a moment's pause before he realized Ryou actually meant that and also did not mind. Then he smiled. It was a smile Ryou really, really liked to see, crooked in its inability to totally let go after years of threats and hardships, but warm beneath it all as it tried...Then Darius pulled off Ryou's surcoat and put his hand on Ryou's thigh beneath the dark tunic. Ryou retaliated, getting a grip on that dark red tunic. Ryou couldn't wrestle to save his life, but in this sort of battle he had an advantage; Darius didn't wear trousers and had already taken off his belt.

The bed creaked happily. This wasn't the easy, no-thinking sex Ryou had thought it'd be when his back had first hit the mattress, before twenty minutes of discussion and a whistle-stop tour of the Outlands' sexual practices. It was exciting, though, in a way he wasn't used to. But it was damned hard, a difficulty he suspected was uniquely his own. Darius seemed to be enjoying himself, but for Ryou it was hard to reach out, touch a hip or a thigh, and not immediately pull back and stay still when his lover reciprocated. Hands did indeed get mixed up a bit, and overall it just felt...weird. And he also had to fight himself to not stop and pick up the clothes that were being slowly stripped off and dropped onto the floor. He'd always been careful of his business suits, but now that he knew how precious a thing clothes actually were, he wanted to treat his only decent piece with respect. Hopefully he'd have more soon, and a place to hang them - or rather, a chest to put them in. 

That reminded him of another question. He didn't necessarily want to talk. The mood was damned resilient, but this was pushing it. But neither did he want to stop talking, now that they'd finally broached the subject of this relationship. 

"Darius- oh!"

Darius snickered at the reaction, the sound echoing through Ryou's bare abdomen.

"Hm, Darius, about the room-"

"What room?" asked Darius in a totally disinterested tone, his concentration elsewhere.

"You said you were going to get me my own room."

"Oh yes. One not too far away. And I hope I'll be welcome in your bed on a regular basis."

"Yes, I guess."

"You're supposed to say, I'm counting on it."

"I will be, but it was the room I was wondering about," said Ryou, squirming away from those hands and that mouth that were not helping him concentrate. "I don't want to impose on your space, but the way you mentioned it earlier- is it wrong for two men to share a room here?"

"A room or a bed?" Darius purred, reaching for him again. 

"A room. Focus."

Darius smiled sensually but desisted. He rolled to one side and propped his head up on one hand to look at Ryou comfortably, just one hand doing lazy circles on Ryou's stomach. "Yes, a room. You will have one, of course."

"Okay, I had a question about that. I do not want to impose on you-"

"You're not, you ass."

"Thank you, but beyond that, does sharing a room violate some Assyrian custom? Because I don't see anything wrong with it."

Darius's expression went from lustful to blank. "...You don't? Really? But-"

"Darius."

"Huh?"

"Culture gap."

"...Men live together in your country?" 

"Well, lovers do, some of them." 

"Really?" Darius looked intrigued. "Well, here I'd only be living with you if I was your eromenos."

"I find myself forced to point out that I'd be the one living with you."

Darius swatted the air like he was chasing away all those previous pesky misunderstandings. "Bah, it would not matter anyway, boys stay with their mentors until they're ready to move on, but even then they have their own room. Once grown, a man must have his own dwelling. That's the norm, anyway. I did hear that the Ionian poet Cessalee lived for thirty years with his lover, who happened to be the general of the army of Ambroxes. That was odd, but nobody from Ambroxes seemed to find it so...The Free Cities are such a patchwork of ideas, I don't think even they keep track. In Aksum, shield brothers will often live in a house side by side, sometimes joined by a courtyard and encircled by the same wall, but each has their own chamber. Hell, even the women have their own chambers unless you're a peasant and living in a shack."

"I see. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind having a space of my own. Won't anyone mind if I move into a room here, in the Noble Quarters?"

"Did I mention this palace belongs to the king? Did I mention the king was my brother?"

"That is certainly convenient," said Ryou dryly, making Darius grin. "Very well, then. But what I was getting at was, do we have to stay discreet?"

Darius cocked his head to one side. "Discreet?"

"Is there any reason you don't want others to find out about our relationship?"

Darius snorted and rolled away, off the bed. "Personally I don't give a damn if the whole of Sura knows we share our blankets. There'll be talk, of course. There always is. Some of the nobles from Persian lineages will potentially throw a few jibes your way. You can handle that. Give them one of those looks of yours. They'll figure out soon enough that you're not some ball-less pussy I'm bedding. If you get any serious hassle-...where the hell did Peistrasos put my stuff?" he muttered, ferreting around a drawer of a decorated wardrobe near the bed. Darius's room was a reflection of its owner; there was an inbuilt regality in the luxurious surroundings, which was otherwise completely invaded by weapons, maps, pieces of armor and crates stacked here and there. Darius was opening a few seemingly at random and poking around anything from clothes and old sandals to objects that looked quite precious and were probably the result of a commander's right to choose his own pick of the loot. 

"I was only gone six months...A man can't find his own things in here. I'm sure it was here...About the courtiers, Ryou, make sure you walk around with Jexen as an attendant as much as you can. It will signify your status, and if one of the goat-fuckers really insults you, you will have his word to add to yours later as to what happened. You are allowed to defend your honor, though do try not to kill anybody. I will back you up if you do, but that'd not be the way to make friends, and it can make a big mess out of Leyam's tortuous little plots to keep all these fighting dogs balanced out against each other."

...Because the Assyrian court could get even more fun and friendly, it seemed. 

"You're not serious, are you? You don't really expect me to-...they actually have duels here?"

"Fights? Oh, we do, but it's rare," said Darius, glancing up from a deep chest. "It's rare because we all know who we are, where our place is, and even newcomers know the rules. You will really confuse them. Then again, fifteen years of my brother's reign has made them cautious about dismissing someone based on looks or apparent prowess. Leyam has greeted you and approved of you; that will protect you from a lot of trouble, though it will procure you as many enemies as friends. Ah, here it is." Darius picked out a flask from a series of bottles in the bottom of a short chest that opened from the front, and then he turned towards the bed, naked, aroused, resplendent. It was terribly distracting. 

He crawled onto the bed again, eyes raking over Ryou's body. The open window, the singing guards, the royal court, the somnolent dogs watching them from the blanket near the doorway and the whole press of the immediate future slipped from Ryou's mind. He reached - still a bit hesitant, damn it, but he hid it by moving slowly - to place his palm flat against Darius's bare chest. It was a little too warm in the room for this, even without clothes. Ryou could feel a bead of sweat run down his back. And he wanted to feel more, he wanted the lust in those dark eyes to open him up and dig everything out...If this was one of his one night stands back in Japan, he'd know exactly what to do, he'd be in control, already deep in another's body, a pliant, willing body...and it would be nowhere near as exciting and scary and _wanting_ as this moment right now.

Darius uncorked the flask with one thumb, sending the stopper flying. "Do you mind?" he said, holding it up. His other hand tightened on Ryou's thigh, which clued the latter in. Ryou nodded permission, though this reminded him of something else he'd wanted to ask, something that was really going to be quite pressing in the next minute.

"Darius, just one more question-"

"Aaaah, no more talking," said Darius with a corner smile that looked as hedonistic as a leer.

"Do you always do it...ah, here? Like this?" Ryou asked, watching the drizzle of oil snake its way around his thighs, up to the crook and onto his balls - he shuddered and closed his eyes briefly. Darius made a noise that was amused and full of desire. Ryou could feel the viscous liquid run down his skin like a warm tongue. Oh damn it, they'd hardly _done_ anything yet and he was already this hard-...

"Others embrace from behind," said Darius, voice so low even those bloody mutts by the door would not be able to make out the words, not that the tone left anything to the imagination. "But I like it better this way; especially with you, I just have to be watching your face when you spill-"

"Yes, but," said Ryou, then had to fish around in his memory for what he'd been about to say. Darius's hand was tight on his knee and sliding upwards, the sheer pressure of his fingers as exciting as any caress. "You don't...do penetration?"

Darius's momentary blank look turned into a frown, and his hand stopped. "Ryou, I would never treat you so. You're neither a woman nor a ball-less non-man to rut into like an animal."

Ryou extended a mental apology to the female gender at large and to eunuchs everywhere, but he was not going to fight that one, he was just going to let that slide for now. "I take it men don't do that here."

Darius lay down beside him, chin level with Ryou's stomach. At least he was taking this 'culture gap' notion in stride now, and was not getting too surprised or put off by some of Ryou's questions. "Of course not. I mean, not voluntarily; rape is another matter entirely, as is prostitution. But not between friends, no. A man who'd accept that might as well be a woman. The Greeks believe it threatens the male spirit. Boys who begin to like that sort of stuff turn girly."

The Greeks again. "Is that so."

Darius caught a trickle of oil making its way down Ryou's thigh with his fingertip, and slowly escorted it back up, dragging the nail lightly across the skin. "Well, that's what I was taught. But I hear some Ionians practice it...And then there's Emperor Cornutus Caesar, the predecessor of Galeo the Older. I have it on firm evidence that he used to buy the best hung slaves at the market to service him. Romans, huh? Yet the man could ride a horse, lift a spear and father bastards until he was well past fifty. Terentius knew him personally, he swears to it. So maybe the Greeks don't have the right of it. I guess I never thought it about it much. But I hear some big-headed Roman philosophers spoke in denouncement of men getting ploughed like women. A denouncement they made after Emperor Cornutus passed away and Galeo proved he was only interested in fighting his wife, screwing his mistress and raping other countries. Still, I'd say most Romans consider fucking that way to be degenerate, and if _they_ think that, that's saying something. Besides, the very thought of it- feh."

Feh indeed, thought Ryou, tracing a scar across Darius's shoulder. Well, he'd not been in that much hurry to get taken that way, in truth. And though a little curl of honesty forced him to admit he'd miss that tight, sliding thrust into another body, he preferred Darius - vibrant, stubborn and with those unreasoned prejudices - to some mere sexual sensation...Though perhaps doing it the Greek way had some similarities? Particularly when one had a lover with quite a lot of leg muscle...

"As a whole, I think the better Romans are opposed to what the Greeks do - the erastae, as well as the systematic pairing of the Tiban soldiers. They say it corrupts the youths and is uncouth for the men," said Darius, half his mind on his lecture and the other half on spreading the oil over Ryou's thighs and other, even more sensitive areas. "They're pretty weird over there; a lot of Romans believe in the same asceticism as the Greeks, and they live by that too. They even have Brides of Aten, men as well as women, who stay virgins all their lives. So-called men who voluntarily live as eunuchs and are fine with being called brides - that's pretty weird, but they're proud of it. Every free Roman, from the poorest to the senators, are forbidden from wearing anything other than a tunic and toga, or the long tunic for women. They're quite strict that way. But then while one man's living in this rigid sobriety, his neighbor right next door-"

Ryou made up his mind, reached for the oil and pushed Darius back while the latter was saying something about Romans and goats. Darius looked surprised, then intrigued. Ryou knew himself well enough to realize that he was either going to be the seme or he was going to be virtually immobile again out of cultural conditioning and sheer information overload. The best way of learning about this mutual participation was to let Darius show him what it entailed. And for starters...

"I believe I made a promise earlier," he said, pouring the oil onto Darius the way he'd seen his lover do it. They were making a royal mess of the coverlets. Ahhh the joys of having free labor to do the backbreaking task of washing sheets by hand. Ryou made up his mind that next time, he'd badger Darius into using a towel or blanket they'd keep on purpose and wash on their own, giving some poor slave a little less work and fewer juicy details to talk about. 

"Promise? What prom-...ahhhh." 

Ryou smiled at that exhalation that was only partly to signal understanding. The way that made his lips move around his lover's sex also produced an appreciative follow-up noise.

"You...don't have to," Darius said after a few seconds, very reluctantly because at this point Ryou had gotten his hands well and truly oily and had gone exploring with his fingers. The scent of the bronze skin and the thick brown hair tickled Ryou's nose. The oil on his hands was plain unscented olive oil, no surprise there; Darius was not the kind to like prissy fragrances. It was almost certainly comestible, which was good, things were undoubtedly going to get messy soon. Ryou lifted his head, letting his mouth draw back sloooowly, and gave his handiwork the assessing look of a perfectionist. That was a start, but surely he could do better.

"Let me," he said without looking up when Darius touched Ryou's hair and started to reiterate that this wasn't necessary. "In my country, keeping an oath, even unspoken, is considered the height of a man's honor."

"...You _are_ teasing me this time," growled Darius in a tone that reminded his audience that teasing Ghan the Beast, leader of the Hounds of Assyria, was probably not something that should be done.

"Just a little. This may be something the younger partner does in your culture, but it's not that clear-cut in mine, so it's not like I mind. We've both got things to learn and unlearn. We might as well get started, unless of course you wanted to talk some more."

Darius's hand was a hard pressure on Ryou's neck, quite an adequate answer. Ryou felt a smile tug his face. He let his fingers slide down from the uncut tip of Darius's erection and travel south, followed by his mouth. Darius made a kind of voiceless sound that was pure sex to Ryou's ears. His own hard-on was starting to ache...Damn, he'd forgotten to ask where sixty nines featured in the sexual landscape of Assyria. But if he broke off for a question now, Darius would probably punch him. 

His fingers caressed their way down again, a barely-there pull on the foreskin to let his tongue caress as well. The hand on his neck convulsed but quickly returned to a warm, gentle grasp, and Ryou found that for once he didn't mind, almost found that contact, that shared control, exciting...He swallowed the little foretaste on his tongue. His hand curved, caressed testes, let his fingers trail further down on sensitive skin. Darius's breathing was harsh and all over the map, and his muscles were tensing, strength that rang and shuddered beneath Ryou's palms. Ryou almost pulled back at that point; he was barely getting started...but then again, tiredness was lurking behind his lust, and Darius was going to get up early tomorrow to give the Sura troops hell, so maybe the more involved lovemaking could wait for another day. Ryou let his tongue play one more time in the creases near the tip, and then he slowly moved his mouth down, taking his lover's erection in. His fingers kneaded Darius's thigh and then swept to the balls that were starting to tighten, the caress oily and a little rough; Darius would undoubtedly like his caresses like his lube, unvarnished. 

"Uh-..." Darius made a noise that suggested an attempt to remember how to vocalize. "Do you-...ah-...do you swallow-"

Ryou made a sound of affirmation, which was quite enough. A word - Assyrian and untranslatable, but one Ryou heard a lot around soldiers - squeezed out of Darius's mouth as he bucked. Ryou put both hands and mouth to the task of making sure his lover got the most out of the wave rocking his hips and body, swallowing and licking and dredging the pleasure out just that little longer. 

Finally Darius's grip moved to Ryou's shoulder and nudged him away. Ryou let the sensitized organ slide from his mouth with one last shuddery lick, and glanced up. His lover was panting, magnificent body spread out on the bed...a sharp ache made Ryou's hand fall to his own erection out of sheer reflex. Damn, but he could come right here and now just looking at this. 

Darius's eyes flickered open and he reached down. "Come here," he growled like one of his dogs. Ryou found his shoulder caught in grip that could not be denied and he was hauled up to half fall onto his lover's body.

Ryou could have said at this point that he'd be quite happy to jerk off on the tail end of that short but very appreciated blowjob, like Darius himself had done back at Essin. He could have said that, but the full body contact of hot skin on skin, and the way his dick found itself dragged up against oiled flesh, tripped Ryou's into a new realm of desire and lust and a slow meltdown of self control. With a deep groan he pushed himself down- into- on- oh! Darius's hands were on his lower back, gripping him and sliding up and down, the strength of the fingers against Ryou's skin as strangely erotic as the thrust of his dick into slick heat and pleasure. Ryou knew Darius's spent erection had to be rather sensitive right now- but the man didn't say anything about the weight and friction Ryou was applying to his body, and even used those hands to egg Ryou on, a mouth fastening on Ryou's shoulder in a bite before- 

\- before pushing him away to half an arm's length, to be able to see Ryou's face. 

Ryou shook away the hold with a frustrated noise because now the touch of hot, wet skin was like a drug high and he needed _more_. Darius laughed, a low sound of approval as he held Ryou up with insolent ease, watching Ryou's face to his content as the latter gasped and felt his body shudder. Ryou's gaze bounced around the bed's headboard, Darius's hungry gaze and then down at their bodies where he was thrusting against his lover's inner thigh. This sensation- it was nothing at all like anal sex and Ryou decided instantly that he didn't mind and this was damn good as it was and he didn't want it to ever stop. Ever. But at the very thought, his traitorous body gave an inner lurch, a start of release that took him by surprise because surely, surely he could have gone on longer, felt that hot sliding touch longer, done it better and with more intent- no- no not yet wait dammit-

 _Now_ said another part of him. Now! And now and now and...hmmm, now...

A finger wiped the sweat from his eyebrow, ran teasingly down his nose. Ryou thrust one last time, instinctively chasing the fading tremors of orgasm. He shivered, opened his eyes and blinked into focus. When it didn't come, he remembered his glasses on the floor along with his clothes. It felt like a bit of a comedown somehow, but then Darius let him sink forward until they were lying body to body. Ryou's common sense informed him it was really, really too hot for that sort of thing, but most of him loved it, just like he loved the arm Darius had snaked around his waist to hold him tight. 

"So," Ryou eventually murmured against the warmth of Darius's shoulder, "will I be welcome in your bed too, in the coming days?"

"Counting on it," mumbled Darius from somewhere near Ryou's right bicep. 

"I'll be sure to have plenty of new questions by then."

That earned him a slap on the rump and then a good natured shove to roll him off. The bedroom felt almost cool for a few seconds as sweat evaporated, and then the heat leapt back on him again.

"We made a mess of your covers," Ryou said, reaching off the bed for his glasses.

"Fuck the covers," said Darius with great conviction, using a corner to wipe off and then leaning back, one arm folded beneath his head. He closed his eyes, but then one cracked open and he frowned. "Damn, forgot the candles."

"I'll get them," said Ryou, standing up and noting with satisfaction the wonderfully languid feel in his body and the lack of stress in his mind. 

Darius grunted his thanks. Ryou stretched, arms over his head, and then he walked over to the tall candle holder Darius had brought into the room with him earlier. He blew out the five flames, put the cap onto the oil lamp he himself had been using before Darius showed up, and turned back towards the bed. His lover was already asleep, stretched out naked on the covers in the grey-blue light from the stars and moon outside the windows. Ryou looked down at him in wonder. This...this right here was one of those moments in life that stayed self-contained and vibrant in one's mind, a memory he'd look back to much later and think, whatever else happened, at that particular moment life was really good. An immortal moment. Though one without a camera which was a pity, because damn...Ryou smiled at the thought. He'd been smiling a lot these days. He'd probably smiled more in the last month than in the whole previous year. Hopefully there wasn't some kind of quota.

He went to bed naked too because he didn't have any bedclothes yet, and also because it was hot and it really did not seem to matter much anymore, a good feeling all in all. Completely relaxed, he slept five solid hours without twitching, that faint smile still on his face and one hand resting on Darius's thigh, until the first ray of light broke across the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the start of writing the Outlands series, I decided that I would restrict myself to 10 minutes max of research on any one subject, or I'd spend all my day trawling the internet and never get anything written.
> 
> This chapter banged up against my 10 minute rule a lot, but this has been researched nonetheless, if not cross-referenced (Ryou would be disappointed in me). The two varieties of Greek slash, erastae and military, the huge predominance of intracrural sex, the greek ideal of men and lovers, what the Romans thought of all that - kind of mixed, from what I could tell - the presence of cross-genderism in ancient cultures, etc. Then there's also a lot I changed on the fly or made up to give more detail and accentuate that these cultures have changed and evolved over the thousands of years. I urge anyone who's curious to do more research, because even if some details are unpleasant (I do not like the idea of eromenos, no, not at all, even with the blanket excuse of 'it's a very different culture') it's still all quite fascinating and a needed change from the idiocies we inherited from our judeo-Christian background in our own society. Mind you, it's very hard to find out more details and cross-reference for reliability, as the matter has suffered from lack of historical research and also centuries of various form of censorship...


	2. Social Insurance Number

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeline: the morning after the previous chapter, The Talk

According to Darius, the door to the library was the one with the bronze engraving of Teraqin-Hallit fighting the Dacians. Ryou examined the metal plate inserted into the wood depicting a scene of a wide-eyed curly-bearded man in profile, dressed in stylized armor and flinging arrows at three identical foes a third his size. Ryou supposed this was it. He pushed it open just wide enough to slip his head in and spy two bookcases of scrolls and nobody in sight. Good.

Ryou walked in and got a better impression of the room. It was a long rectangular space divided by floor-to-ceiling bookcases that acted as inner partitions. The shelves were made of wood and metal, elaborate design of diamond-shaped nooks to hold scrolls, and flattened segments reserved for the few books. The far wall beyond the bookshelves was pierced with windows high up, covered in opalescent material to protect the scrolls while letting in some light from the early morning sunshine. Sconces on the walls and shielded lamps would provide further illumination once lit. Booths beneath the windows, with cushioned benches and tables on which to unroll scrolls, invited the readers to sit down and read.

The first thing that struck Ryou was that, for a royal library that was the only repository of non-sacred texts in Sura, it wasn't very large; around two thousand scrolls at a first quick estimate, and a further tenth of that number in books. The second thing that struck him was that he wasn’t alone.

The person already present was half-reclining against cushions on one of the benches, a cup in one hand, a scroll unrolled before him. He glanced up when Ryou reached the booth area, they saw each other at the same time. Ryou got a small shock. The way the face was half lifted to the light, the frown that said the man was not pleased at being disturbed, the tawny hair unbound and falling on his shoulders...For a fleeting moment, the resemblance to Darius was striking.

Then he lifted his head further, that pleasant smiling mask slipped back onto his clean-shaven features and the resemblance was nowhere to be seen. “Ah, Ryou,” said Leyam in lieu of greeting.

“I’m sorry, your majesty, I did not know you were here,” said Ryou, already backpedalling towards the exit. Though Leyam looked perfectly happy to see him, Ryou had not mistaken that first expression.

“That’s the fourth time you’ve called me that since we met.”

Ryou hesitated, almost out of sight behind the nearest shelf, the door a few meters behind him. Would it be ruder to stay or to respond? “You mean, 'your majesty'? I’m sorry, should I call you something else?”

“Have you heard any of my people call me anything else?” Leyam prompted. 

Ryou cast his mind back to the courtiers, the chancellor, Darius and the tailors he’d seen interact with the King of Assyria. “...Just ‘My king’.”

Leyam went ‘Hm-hmm’ into his cup.

“Is that the proper form of address?”

“Proper?” mused Leyam, putting down his drink and wiping the corner of his mouth with his thumb. He was dressed like yesterday, and Ryou found himself wondering if the king had gone to bed at all. “Proper...well...” 

Then Leyam shifted on his seat so that his feet landed square on the floor, one arm against his chest in a heraldic pose and the other pointing straight at Ryou, the gunsight for a suddenly stern and forbidding expression. “In the age of my forefathers, you would have to address me as “Great King, Light of the East, master and liege” and you would have your hands cut off if you approached me from behind, and that’s if I was feeling generous.” Then Leyam slumped back in his seat, hooked an arm over the booth's backrest and crooked a finger at Ryou to beckon him forward. “Fortunately we learned a few things from the Greeks. Our free men have liberties and a say in this city’s running that make my ancestors pound in fury at the doors of their crypts on a daily basis. All you need to do, Ujiie Ryou, is serve me loyally and call me ‘My King’. If that’s not breaking an oath you’ve already made to your Emperor, that is. Is it?”

“What? Oh, no, no oath. But-...never mind.” Ryou hesitated, but then obeyed the gesture that had indicated he should seat himself in the stone bench opposite Leyam. He’d almost forgotten, in the whirl of events last evening, that Leyam had asked him a few questions about Ryou’s home country, and had been curious that Ryou was in principle governed by an Emperor. Then a slave carrying bolts of cloth had come in, and Leyam had made a signal not to discuss it further before Ryou could go into the details of a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary government. 

Leyam’s sandy eyebrows quirked, and when Ryou had seated himself, he said, “But?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said no, you've not sworn an oath, 'but-...' But what?”

“Well...I’m not Assyrian.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Probably nothing,” said Ryou, taking off his glasses and giving them a weary wipe with a clean cloth he'd finally managed to score amongst the stacked crates, weapons, pieces of armor, maps, tablets and styluses and an old chewed beef bone he'd found in Darius's quarters this morning. It didn't matter, in final; the king might just be ‘my King’ rather than Light of the East etc, but anyone setting foot on his land was subject to his law, and by that law there was hardly anything at all that was not within the king's power. 

“What’s tying your ankle? What’s troubling you?” Leyam rephrased when Ryou gave him a perplexed look. “You’ll have to tell me how the Gift of Zaratusra works, by the way, because it still seems incredible that we can understand each other as well as we do, bar a few expressions here and there.”

“As soon as I’ve figured it out, I will be honored to tell you,” said Ryou, rubbing the bridge of his nose before putting on his glasses again. “I have...questions, but I do not want to disturb you any further.”

“One of the things you’ll learn about me, Ujiie Ryou,” said Leyam, “is that when you find me reading the annotations to the Code of Atolius at this unworthy hour of the morning, I'm in a state where I'll welcome some interesting discourse.”

That hadn’t been Ryou’s first impression, but he wasn’t going to call the king a liar. And it was true that he did have questions. Leyam, King of Assyria, had presumably better things to do than answer a bewildered foreigner’s queries, but Ryou did not know anyone else who knew exactly who he was, where he was from, and could answer to the depth required. Well, that wasn’t quite true; Ryou could ask Darius. But the kind of question he had would not be neutral when asked of his lover. 

“Well...If I may-“

“Just a minute,” said Leyam, lifting a hand. “Nico, go grab some breakfast.”

Ryou blinked, then looked over his shoulder. Nicodeme was sitting two booths away, blinking drowsily. The mark of a pillow decorated his right cheek. Ryou hadn’t seen him earlier, the boy must have been sleeping on the bench when Ryou had first come in. He was dressed in a short skirt and not much else, and he looked ridiculously young with his hair tousled and his eyes sleepy. But Ryou caught sight of something small being slipped into the back of the large belt holding up his skirt when Nicodeme got up from the bench, something thin, palm-sized and that gleamed metalically in the soft light from the windows; a little reminder that, as with everything about and around Leyam, appearances could be dangerously deceptive. 

Ryou responded politely to Nicodeme's parting bow and then attempted to gather his thoughts, focusing away from whatever weapon Nicodeme had bared on his arrival and more on the fact that Leyam had, without much thought, dismissed his bodyguard so he and Ryou could chat in private. 

"My questions...I suppose I am trying to figure out what place I can make for myself here."

Leyam invited him to elaborate with a quirk of the eyebrows.

"Darius has invited me to stay with him," said Ryou, since Leyam was already thoroughly acquainted with his relationship with Darius - Rand would have seen to that before Ryou had even set foot in the capital - and would thus not likely expire from shock at the notion of his brother inviting another man to stay on intimate terms. "He's arranged for me to have a vacant room in the Noble Quarters, and you've clothed me and fed me, otherwise I would really have next to nothing in term of possessions. I owe a debt to the both of you which I don't know how I'll ever repay. But now I need to start looking out for myself, and for that I need to know how your society works and how I can fit into it. Is there any place that could use my kind of skills here? Can a foreigner even find work in Assyria without papers? How do I introduce myself, or prove to anyone who I am? What kind of revenue do I need for food and lodgings, how much are the taxes and am I, a foreigner, expected to pay them yearly, or are they taken off income?"

Leyam's eyes had widened in genuine amazement at each question, and then he started laughing, that snorting guffaw that had startled Ryou yesterday. “Taxes?! You want to pay taxes?!”

“...Do you not have them here?” 

“Of course we bloody have them, how else do you think I run the state? We Assyrians _invented_ the laws of taxation, as well as the rule of law itself, whatever those Babylonians and Sumerians say. But I’ve never met anyone so concerned with paying them. Your country's collectors must have such an easy job of it, may I have a twelfth of their bountiful joy.”

“What you’ve never met is someone who has not lived in any country remotely similar to yours,” Ryou pointed out. “I’m afraid this is the extent of my ignorance. Darius told me a lot about the war, religion, Assyria's history and such, but there's a lot of small details that makes every day life here possible that it never occurred to either of us to talk about.”

“Are our countries that different?” asked Leyam, snorting away a last chuckle.

“In many respects, they are.”

“Huh. Interesting, you’ll have to tell me much more. But not this morning.” Leyam rubbed his eyes. It seemed the laughter had broken the flow of energy that'd kept him going for who knew how long. He looked tired now. “To answer your question, you’re a guest of my brother's and a foreign dignitary. That means you don’t have to worry about room or board, my dearly confused friend from a far off land.”

“Foreign dignitaries have sources of income from their own countries,” Ryou pointed out, tone steady but intent blunt. “And guests are eventually expected to leave.”

Leyam chuckled again like an afterthought, but Ryou did not think he’d found the last words droll or missed their import. But all he said was, “Where is my brother anyway? He’s normally up as soon as Holy Shamash rises in the sky. Did you exhaust him so much he’s still in bed?”

“He said he had something to do with the troops around town this morning,” said Ryou, refusing to be thrown off his stride by the King's innuendos. “He left before dawn.”

“I see. Did you discuss this with him at all? Don’t tell me he gave you the impression you would have to fend for yourself from this day forward. If he was that rude to the first firm friendship he’s had in awhile, I’ll have to take a stick to the bloody mutt.”

“If you’re wondering why I’m not asking Darius about this...well, maybe it’s different here-“

“No, no, these are not the kind of questions one would ask a lover,” Leyam concluded astutely. “It’d sound too much like you were asking him how he was going to support you.”

“Yes,” muttered Ryou, who’d have preferred to not have it said out loud at all.

“I fail to see why you're so anxious about this."

True, Ryou could probably kick back and relax for at least a few weeks, or twelvedays as they counted them here. But that made him feel too much like a tourist. It just wasn't his nature. If he was going to stay here, however long, he needed to know exactly where 'here' was and how he was going to fit into it.

"I don't mean to cast any disparagement on your generosity or Darius's, but my countrymen feel very strongly about living on charity. Begging is considered one of the worst things someone from my culture can stoop to."

"Really?" Leyam interrupted, looking fascinated as always. "And what if they're about to go hungry?"

"They go hungry," Ryou said bluntly, then waved away the over-easy generalization. "Darius is taking me to the temple of Hygeia tomorrow to make a donation for the recovery of my broken arm. It's my arm, yet I don't have even two, er, denarii to rub together. It's denarii, right?"

"No, that's Imperial currency. Though we tend to have adopted it for many things," Leyam said dryly. "As for funds, you have ten talents of silver."

"I do?" Ryou blinked at the memory of Leyam's declaration yesterday. "That's right, I do. Thank you, you were once more being very generous-"

"I've got quite a lot of talents, whereas I only have the one brother," said Leyam with a regal nod. "And unless Hygeia saved your arm from the deepest putrefaction, I can assure you that you have plenty for her and whatever other God helped you survive the road riding at Darius's side. My brother is a man of superb physique who tends to forget others are mere mortals, so I think you'll have many oblations to make, but rest assured you have plenty of money to make them with."

"Oh. Good. I have to admit, I have no idea how much that sum represents. How much does a talent of silver weigh?"

"One talent," Leyam replied innocently. 

"Right. Ah, how many denarii is it worth?" 

"Well that depends. Which currency are we talking about? Which country were these denarii forged in? What's your coin's assay weight, is it stamped with an eagle or a king, and are the edges worn?"

Leyam was waiting for Ryou's comeback, obviously enjoying himself. The king's sense of humor was better than his suspicions, but only by so much, Ryou reflected. Very well then. Ryou had his shortcomings in sword-wielding and Assyrian etiquette, but not in economy. 

"Let me phrase it another way. If I have one silver talent, how many bowls of rice will that buy me?"

"Ei? Rice? You eat that bland stuff?"

"Yes. It's a staple in my country." Leyam had probably never had anything approaching the quality. 'Bland stuff'...

"Hmmm. We only get rice imported from the Levant region, and that-"

"I'm sorry, did I say rice? I meant bread, the large flat loaves they sell in all the markets. How many of those can I buy for one talent of silver?"

"Hmmmmmm, well, for one talent of silver..." Leyam scratched his chin, eyes twinkling, then he decided to concede that Ryou had cornered him. "For one talent you'll be able to buy a hell of a lot of bread. I have no idea how much. This may surprise you, but I have never actually bought bread at the market myself."

Ryou kept his outward composure, but inwardly he smacked himself in the head. "That's right, my apologies."

Leyam gave that snorting laugh. He'd obviously enjoyed the exchange. "I can tell you that a good horse is worth two hundred denarii, a good slave with skills but no education is worth three hundred or more depending on his health and the market, and a large house near the walls of the palace can be rented for one hundred denarii a year. The houses in the Noble Quarters are not for rent and you are quite welcome to stay there by my decree. Meals are provided as a matter of course, though it's polite to regularly buy a few seah of wine and a goat for the stewards. One talent is currently worth a hundred and fourteen aureii or in the region of two thousand eight hundred denarii, depending on who weighs it and counts out your coin."

With the exactitude of a cash register, Ryou's mind rang up just how much money he had to his name here and what that represented in terms of everyday life. His jaw dropped- but Leyam steamrolled right over his stuttered attempts to express his gratitude. 

"That's by the Doric standard, which is much purer than the Roman standard; they've gone and watered the metal again. I'd say you'd lose five denarii out of every hundred right now if you're not careful which coin you trade in, and more if you're traveling closer to Roma Praetorium. Whichever emperor is on it, I'd advise you to have any eagle-stamped coin assayed in town by the Greeks on Silver Row to see what you're dealing with. Now, if you buy that slave I mentioned earlier, it'll cost you...ah, thirty denarii a year to keep him clothed and fed and all that, whereas paying an unskilled labourer to do much the same job would put you back nine bronze bits a day. That's not quite one denarius. And though I don't know how much they flog their bread for down at the market, Tupila tells me a grown man needs twenty four mina of grain a month, which he'll need one hundred and twenty bits to pay for. That's thirty bits for an Imperial modius of wheat, twenty five for barley, steeper than in my father's time but that's because of the war." 

Ryou nodded as he memorized the information and started drawing economic equivalencies in his mind. He wasn't surprised that Leyam would not know the price of a loaf of bread yet could recite all those numbers off; from international currency negotiations which, without computers or even reliable communication, would rival the complexity of the Nikkei, all the way down to the cost of a regular free man's household including wife, children and slaves. A good king would know all of this before sitting down and working out the taxes with his aides.

Fast on that thought, Ryou said, "I wonder...It can't measure up to your generosity, but I would like to help you any way I can. It will take me a few months to find my feet and learn all the ins and outs of your financial system and your economy, but this was my work back in the Inlands, I am reasonably good at it. I believe I should be able to at least assist your ministry of finance in a few of their tasks."

"My what?"

"...The office that takes care of all the income? And the taxes." 

"Oh, right. You actually want to do that? I'd cut off my right arm to never have to touch it again without getting the kingdom robbed out from under me."

"I find it interesting." 

"Every bow needs its own length of cord," Leyam muttered, which was Assyrian for 'it takes all kinds'. "Tupila is the one who helps me manage all of that, he has several scribes who work under him, and- oh, a lot of other people too. If you wish to help me there, well, I think that at the least you might have some interesting ideas. Take them to me or Tupila, though, because you'll be giving anyone else a headache, as well as a good indication that you're from somewhere considerably further off than Ezo. We are keeping that little fact between me, my brother, Rand and Tupila at this point. As for assisting, who knows- here, if you can make sense of this," Leyam said, unrolling a small scroll that'd been waiting at his elbow and flipping it Ryou's way, "then you've got more blessed lights than I do."

Ryou stared down at the scroll for a long minute. Then he looked up. "I'm sorry."

"Heh? The screw-up in the New Athens' minting house isn't quite _that_ bad, is it?" Leyam asked, startled by the feelings that managed to escape Ryou's struggling composure. 

"No. I mean..." Ryou tried to hide just how large an abyss had suddenly opened at his feet. "I cannot read it. The language, I don't know how to read it."

"Oh, fool that I am, that's Greek. Here, you mentioned you're familiar with the Empire's letters, god knows I get enough of those-"

"No-" Ryou cleared his throat and glanced briefly at the scroll Leyam had tendered his way, the one he'd been reading when Ryou entered the room. "It's not the letters. The Gift doesn't translate the written word." There'd been no indication that it would, yet Ryou hadn't even contemplated the possibility...

"Oh..." Leyam wrapped the scroll up studiously after one quick look at Ryou through his tawny lashes, a look that had looked faintly sympathetic. Leyam must have an idea of what this meant to Ryou, who'd always been an avid reader, though he could not fully grasp the loss. This was confirmed when the king shrugged and added reassuringly, "Well, you've just joined the majority of Assyrians then, even amongst the great families. That's why we have scribes. I'll get Tupila to introduce you to Yau-Seen of Tulloa. He's utterly trustworthy, have him read out anything you might need."

"I suppose that would work, thank you," said Ryou automatically. 

Leyam made a delicate finger waggle towards the door. "If you want to talk to Tupila now, just head towards the Golden Hall where Tupila reigns on our country's costs. That's what we call the big square building next to the Women's Gate, opposite the barracks. That's how a kingdom is run, isn't it? Soldiers on one side, money on the other. I have other duties to attend to now, I wish you the good day, my foreign friend. We will talk more later, I really want to know-" his next words were swallowed by a yawn. Ryou found himself hoping the duties included a nap. Though talking with Leyam was a little nervewracking at times, Ryou had found himself touched by the king's sympathy and efforts to answer his question. It gave Ryou good hope he'd be able to get along with Darius's brother after all. 

Ryou got up and bowed, and Leyam left with a grandiloquent gesture that looked entirely automatic. His eyes beneath the lines of smudged kohl were sleepy. He did not seem surprised to find Nicodeme waiting for him right outside the door. He gathered the boy with one sweep of the arm and walked off down the hallway.

Ryou looked at the rows of books all around him and out of reach of his apprehension. So much knowledge contained there...Or not. Darius had occasionally mentioned the books he'd read (been forced to read, rather) when he was young and still the half-prince of Assyria being educated by diligent, long-suffering pedagogues. From what his lover had said, Ryou was ready to bet he'd find codes of law in this library, accounts of various wars, philosophical treatise in Greek and not the simplest Encyclopedia or primer to learning Latin...

Ryou was not going to be able to rely on his abilities to conduct data research anymore; no more books, papers, spreadsheets, computers or internet. He was actually going to have to talk to people instead. Ryou grimaced ruefully. Looked like he and Tupila were about to get well acquainted over the following days. But...not today. Leyam was right, he could afford to take a little time to find his bearings and learn to allow himself to rely on others. Ryou got up and headed past the unreadable stores of knowledge towards the door and the people of the palace going about their duties outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little PS for history nerds and other interested parties. I blew my 10 minute research rule out of the water again, but not by too much so the Assyrian economy is still sketchy. However, note that the silver talent in modern day Outland Assyria is more than half of what the old Mesopotamian talent was. Ten talents of silver would otherwise be VERY generous. 'Ransom a city' generous.


	3. Family and Friends

The first day of Ryou's stay in Sura was rather boring, which was not entirely unwelcome. After his talk with Leyam in the library, he went back to Darius's room and rested until the sun stood poised overhead and the gardens outside vibrated in the heat and insect chirps. At that time Jexen appeared out of nowhere to serve Ryou a tray of lunch. It was a light meal of bread, fruit and cheese as was the custom in these hot countries, the evening meal being the important one. 

Ryou spent some of the afternoon inspecting the room the master of the Noble Quarters had prepared for him, one door down from Darius's, then he rested some more while browsing through a bunch of maps he'd found in his lover's room. Halfway through the afternoon, Peistrasos, one of Darius's palace attendants, invited Ryou to visit the balneum again. As the sun touched the top of the wall around the palace, the servant lead the well-washed and relaxed 'noble guest' to a round room with painted walls at ground level where a meal of melons, steamed barley and lamb with a nut and date sauce was already set out on the sideboard. 

"You look settled down," said Darius behind him, just as Ryou was wondering how he was going to enjoy dinner in this large, empty room with two hovering servants for only company.

"And you looked satisfied with yourself," Ryou concluded with a glance at his lover.

"Furies, I sure am." Darius untied his sword from his belt and tossed it carelessly at Peistrasos. "These lazy divisions stationed around here got a reminder of why they call me the Beast, or considerably worse when they think I'm out of earshot. If you listen closely, you can hear the groaning from here. Ahh, that's better," he added, letting himself fall onto the couch next to Ryou's. He was dressed in a thigh-length skirt, leg greaves, the bracer on his left arm and nothing else. His skin showed evidence of trickles of water. Ryou didn't have to push his imagination very hard to visualize his lover, covered in sweat and dirt, rinsing off in a horse's trough somewhere. Whatever hell the garrison had been through, they would not dare complain about it when their commander, the king's half-brother, shared it with them, and probably left them straggling in his dust. 

"Beer, Peistrasos," Darius said over his shoulder. "I'm too thirsty for wine tonight. Has my skin gone soft, or is it even hotter than it was last year before the floods?"

"I know two things, Lord Ghan," Peistrasos answered ponderously as he brought over the jug of beer and a small silver sieve to filter it into a cup. "One, is that it is hot, and the other is that if your skin is soft, then I'm the Queen of Kush." Peistrasos was a servant, not a slave, a burly old ex-soldier with a limp, terrible scars down one arm, three missing fingers, and a certain lack of servility in his manner.

Darius drank down a whole cup of beer, bit into a melon and mumbled, "I have more to do with the troops tomorrow. We are going to be doing footraces to the Ox Gate. In the late afternoon once the heat dies down a little, though, I don't want to kill the little ladies. They need to be able to shore up defenses against attack in less than two hours, or I'll have them do the same the day after, this time barefoot and with bags of arrows on their backs. But if you're free in the morning, I'm taking you to see Sura." 

"Thank you," said Ryou, a little relieved. One day of doing nothing was just about as much as he could stand. It wasn't just the workaholic in him, either; in Assyria, when there was nothing to do, there really was _nothing_. No internet, no TV, no radio and of course no books unless Ryou wanted to find someone to read to him out loud.

"What are you doing this evening?" he asked on the heels of that thought. During their travels, the time between dinner and sleep had been spent talking and sharing tales. Ryou didn't particularly fancy staying alone now, and not only because of boredom. For a man who'd been solitary most of his life, it was rather alarming how much he missed Darius after not seeing him for just one day. 

"This evening? I've got a few orders to give and a letter to write. But I can do that later. I was planning to go see this room the servants gave you after the meal. I need to make sure those lazy bastards set you up right."

"Oh they did, it's actually very-" Ryou caught the look Darius was giving him as the latter took another slow bite of the melon. It was not the look of a man who was curious to see furniture arrangements. If Ryou had to label that look, the word predatory would come in handy. 

Ryou wiped some of the lamb sauce as well as a wry smile away from his mouth with a slice of bread, and spoke gravely. "It's a great room, more than sufficient for my needs, and you're quite welcome to come see it. I was just concerned you might be a little tired after today."

Darius nearly choked on his mouthful (near the sideboard, Peistrasos coughed suddenly in a way that sounded suspiciously like a muffled snigger). 

The orders were given eventually but the letter did not get written that day... 

 

 

Early morning on his second day in Sura, Ryou finally set foot outside the palace. He gently insisted that they start their tour at the bottom of the city and work their way to the top. Darius was puzzled, since there was 'nothing to see down there', but he conceded with the good-natured shrug of one who did not mind a walk. They rode down early in the morning with a group of Hounds who were going to practice mounted archery in the fields beyond. The Hounds took the extra horses with them while Ryou, Darius and a small escort started the trek back up. Ryou wanted to see the beauties of Sura by all means, but the bottom of the hill was just as important as the top to a new arrival like himself. The crowded houses and narrow streets were the source of the cheap labor used further up the slope, as well as the endless supply of flies that rose all the way up to the palace to be swatted by specially designated slaves. 

The low rent neighborhoods of Sura weren't as bad as Ryou had half pictured them. The poverty here was striking after the palace, but these weren't garbage-ridden slums as found Inlands. For starters, there wasn't going to be that much garbage around when people reused everything to near-extinction and then sold the remains to the ragmen in exchange for a quarter of a copper bit. The scraps of perishable wastes that weren't turned into soup or goat-feed, as well as the night-soil, were dumped in the crude sewer washed out by the aqueduct waters and regularly cleaned by slaves. 

The sewer trench was a miasma that the water and breeze could not quite clear, and it was joined by the rich, bustling smell of too many people living in close quarters without refrigeration for food, clothes that were changed less than once a week, soap and deodorant and who knew what else. There was nowhere near Tokyo's number of people per square meter, but the houses of Sura never rose above two or three stories and as a result, the streets, houses and yards were _packed_. Space was at a premium. Kids, naked in the rising heat, were everywhere, playing rough games unsupervised, drawing pails of water from the aqueduct fountains, carrying items or leading goats and the odd donkey down the hill to the pasture areas. Skinny dogs and cats, sometimes mangled by past fights amongst themselves, weaved around their legs or hid in the garbage. Ryou could only imagine what the rodent population was like, but according to Darius, the only time you saw rats in daylight was if their burrows were flooded or else if Namtar was walking through the town, in which case it was time to go sacrifice at the temple of Hygeia. Namtar was the god of disease, and His mark was in every street they visited; people scarred and blinded by plagues, the weakened matchstick limbs of the beggars, the crooked spine of the skinnier children and a good number of missing digits and limbs that the Priests of Hygeia amputated if the sufferer did not have the money needed to offer up sacrifice for a more wholesome recovery. Ryou supposed it was better than dying of gangrene, though for someone who'd grown up with a fairly egalitarian health system, it was nonetheless somewhat repugnant. 

The lower quarters were the domain of women at this time of day; the men were working on the docks or in the workshops higher up. The women worked as hard as or even harder, cleaning clothes, chopping wood, pounding grain, cooking and sewing and kneading and cutting and tending tiny vegetable patches. The children were either glued to their hips or were left to their siblings' supervision and their own devices. None of them were in school. The only way of getting an education in Sura was in the Temples, and sponsoring and donations were necessary. The mass of the population was totally uneducated, beyond learning the trade of their fathers. Which, from what Ryou saw a little higher up in the shops, workyards and docks, was an education that started very young indeed. Ten year olds were working jobs that would probably kill Ryou in a day. 

Their condition could only be described as arduous and primitive, but the lower classes of Sura seemed not to realize it. Their faces were worn to old age by the time they were thirty, yet those roughened features broke into smiles and cheers when they saw 'Lord Ghan' strolling down their alleys. Kids congregated around them, pestering Jexen, Hamado and the two other Hounds with questions about the campaigns, while some women came up to Darius and bowed low, half-kneeling with their hands lifted before them, thanking him for leading the armies of their sons to victory. 

Their small group of six climbed the streets of Sura. It was already hot, but not yet baking. The street crowded with houses cut sharply upwards in hairpin bends, balconies and gardens perched out on the side of hill beyond it. Leaves of fruit trees buzzed with insects and birds while women shook colored carpets out the window and clapped their red-dyed palms once to chase away bad spirits along with the dust...Sura was very much lived in, a busy hive of people, but it certainly had a solid charm of its own. 

The houses improved in size and elegance as they marched up the hill. Darius led Ryou through one of his favorite areas, the market, with what seemed to be as many people as Ryou had yet seen in the Outlands crowded into a series of large open spaces full of produce and so much noise it could bowl one over. Even Darius and his small group went pretty much unnoticed. 

This was the commercial sector of the city. Businesses congregated together in designated sectors. The streets of clothmakers was full of the busy clack of looms, Iron Row echoed with the sound of hammers, shops of glassware smelled like charred sand...Their group avoided Butcher's row and Tanner's Yard, but Ryou caught a whiff of them in the distance. At Darius's suggestion, Ryou paid particular attention to where all these shops were; the steep streets full of houses did not have names or numbers, people directed themselves by known landmarks such as these. 

It was nearly noon when they reached the palace once more. Ryou had gotten used to Darius being hailed, cheered, occasionally accosted and blessed, but he was glad when their guards went back to the barracks and he and Darius were finally left alone, wonderfully alone, to walk through the palace grounds. The gardens, wide open spaces and elegant buildings around them looked unattainably beautiful right now, like a dream the inhabitants of the city could look up at every day yet never set foot in except in imagination. 

Darius took him up to the highest point, a wall of dizzying height around a corner of the gardens. That was where the aqueduct poured its waters, siphoning some off to the palace while the rest flowed downhill. The wet air was delectable in the heat which was really gearing up. Ryou leaned against the wall, ignoring the way his glasses were getting speckled with tiny drops, and looked out over the city. 

...It was...like a tight weave. The disparity between the bottom of Sura and the top - considerably more stretched than in Ryou's country - felt wrong, yet it was part of a whole. There was cohesion here, a single focus to this simplified society, which, even if it was due to lack of education of the masses, was still remarkable. Ryou knew that hearkening back to 'older, simpler days' was nostalgic bullshit, it was obvious it was better to live at the top of the hill than the bottom, and so much better to live in modern day Japan...Still, there was a certain grace in the way all the inhabitants of Sura seemed to accept their place and fulfill their life's work with cheer and without resentment. On the surface of it, a Confucian dream come true, Ryou thought dryly. Except Ryou knew the reason why there was a solid garrison in Sura, despite good defenses and no enemy armies nearby. It was a no-brainer that the ruling class had to always keep slave revolts and law and order in the back of their minds... 

"Come on," said Darius, tapping Ryou on the shoulder. "Garalgexes, a friend of mine, has invited us to lunch with him. His house is a few paces away from the Women's Gate. You'll like him, he's an old commander of-...tch, now there's someone I did not want to meet."

Ryou looked around. A party had come up the covered stairway that led to the wall, four guards and three attendants, all for the woman walking ahead of them.

She was dressed in a white tunic whose hem swept the tips of her sandals. White veils embroidered in black and silver made a complicated series of loops and pleats around her, billowing out in the hot breeze like wings. Her complexion was so strikingly pale compared to Assyrians that, if Ryou had had an ounce of poetry in his soul, he would have been tempted to mistake her for an apparition, a creature of cool mist, moonlight and shadow in this sunshine country. Her eyes were ringed in kohl, but she wore no other colors, not on her face, nor her hands which Assyrian women traditionally decorated with hennaed designs or red stain on the palms. Her black hair was a complex coif of loops and knots to match the dress; it appeared and disappeared as the veil she held above her head to protect her from the sun waved back and forth. Silver earrings swung from her ears and more of the metal glittered in her hair, the only jewelry she wore. When she looked their way, Ryou felt a touch of coldness that was quite at odds with the noontime heat wave. Then she was once more looking at the gardens, studying the trees and the fountain with hungry eyes as if she could not get enough of the sight.

"Bow," Darius told Ryou as she made her way towards them along the walkway. Ryou quickly imitated his lover, who'd bowed sharply. This was unusual; Darius tended to treat court formalities as entirely optional for dogs and people raised in kennels. Ryou kept his head down, but he turned it a little so that, at this angle, he could get another look at her discreetly. Her face was thin and angular, but she was handsome in a sharp, unsmiling way. She only looked at them when she was nearly abreast. Darius stayed bowed, so Ryou did the same. 

"Ghan," said the woman, a vinegary greeting that stressed the absence of 'Lord'. 

"Sister," replied Darius just as deliberately. 

A bug would have gotten a better look than he did. Then the woman walked on slowly, her hungry eyes back on the gardens. 

Darius stayed bowed until she was past them. His eyes were narrowed and fixed on her back when he straightened. "I need to have a word with the guard. She shouldn't be wandering around out here."

"Who is that?" Ryou whispered, eyes flickering from the woman and her entourage to Darius's expression. 

"Leyam's wife. Her name is Vibiana."

"His _wife_?" Ryou stared wide-eyed after her. He'd noted how the four soldiers, who'd appeared to be an honor guard when he'd first seen them, had become a prisoner's escort the minute they'd recognized Darius. They were now watching the woman in white as if she might try to escape at any moment. She ignored them and their aboutface with a disdain as raw and painful as the sun beating down overhead. "But..."

"Yeah, you can see how it is. She's my brother's wife and queen, but she's also Cassius Leius's daughter, which should make things clearer for you."

"No," said Ryou after a momentary gape of amazement, "no, that really doesn't. He married his uncle's daughter? After-...everything?"

"Cassius arranged the match back when Leyam was fifteen and she was ten. She was the only surviving child of the leader of Hellias, it was hardly a bad match. Leyam went through with it because it gave us another few months of respite from Cassius's plan to send him to Rome. He kept her after Cassius's death because it lulled the suspicions of the Roman-loving camp, and gave us an entire extra half-year in which to gear for war. Why he kept her since then is anybody's guess. I suppose Hellias and the other Free Cities not in the Alliance would make it a rallying cause for war if he discarded her or shoved her off a cliff."

"Darius..." Ryou leaned briefly against the stonework. He had to remind himself that barely three hundred years ago, his own country's feudal lords got up to similar things. But that was...well, that was history. The woman with the hungry eyes was someone he'd just _met_.

"Don't feel pity for her, she's alive and well treated."

"Your brother murdered her father and the entire country knows it," Ryou said more sharply than he'd intended to. "And she's kept a prisoner here if I'm not mistaken." 

"My grandfather would have lapidated her," Darius said bluntly. "If she put her hand beneath my brother's foot, Leyam might attempt to forget who fathered her, but no, she's proven several times that she's Cassius's get through and through. She poisoned one of Leyam's concubines and nearly killed another before we realized what she was up to. Ashur's hand be over Rand forever, he's the one who caught her at it. She didn't aim for Leyam himself, mind you. It'd have been harder, but that spawn of Hecate didn't even try. Her fire burns for power, not for revenge. She was hoping to isolate him and become his queen in more than name. I told my brother time and again to either get rid of her or ship her back to Hellias, but I don't know, maybe he wants to keep an eye on her. He sits and talks with her on occasion, but he swears to me that he doesn't bed her. Enlil only knows what viper would come out of that belly." 

Ryou was trying to find something to say about all this - an almost impossible task across such a wide gap of cultures - when he was sidetracked by a thought. "Wait, if Leyam stays married to her but doesn't want her to have any children, what will he do for heirs?"

Darius gave him an odd look. "What a question. He's got another wife, and he'll probably have more once this war settles."

Of course. A great number of Assyrian free men - the laborers, unskilled helpers of tradesmen, servants - struggled to have enough to maintain even one wife. Some would never marry at all, spending whatever income they could save on a cheap mistress or on cheaper whores. But the more one rose in society, more one was expected to have a proper household: one wife, but also a concubine, or more than one if it could be afforded. Polygamy proper was reserved for the great families, though. It insured a certain redundancy of heirs that could carry name and fortune. 

"Heni'ata is healthy and has given the king three live children, two of which are boys. She's a nice woman, not very smart but nice. Pretty voice and friendly manner. Her youngest son is four and of sickly disposition, her middle child is a girl, but Nirar, her oldest, is eight years of age and Leyam's son through and through. " 

Ryou tried to wrap his head around an eight-year-old Leyam lookalike, and then he tried to imagine Leyam as a father. Once he'd failed on both counts, he asked, "Which part of the palace do they live in?"

"They don't. They're in Allap-Etur province, the satrapy of Heni'ata's father. They're well protected there, and out of the way of all the plots and poisons." He glanced to the left at where the Queen of Assyria had crossed to another wall, still looking about. "My brother is weird, I don't mind saying it, and there's times I know exactly what he's doing and there's times I have no clue. Why keep _that_ one here and not the other?"

Why put out to pasture the well-meaning but not overly bright one, and keep the one with a mind and will as sharp as a dagger who could eventually give in to temptation and try to kill him? Good question, and in Ryou's estimate the answer was 'Leyam'.

Darius shook his head. "Well, it is unseemly to meddle in the matters of a man and his wife, as long as he does not let her interfere in another man's affairs."

"Very wise," said Ryou, tearing his mind away from trying to imagine the King of Assyria sleeping with either of his wives, even the nice one. What did they talk about, dresses...? No, better not go there.

 

 

The garrison did okay in their footrace in the afternoon. This meant that the following morning was reserved for the troops manning the Ox Gate and the Ram Gate, who had so far been safe behind their ramparts from where they'd laughed at their city-based colleagues going through their paces. This left Ryou with not much to do, so he decided to explore the inner palace grounds and gardens that morning, and then maybe find Jexen in the afternoon to go walk around town. 

Ryou admired a magnificent spray of branches and flowers tumbling down from a small tree planted, for reasons known presumably to the gardener, in a large ceramic planter attached to a point halfway up a wall of the palace. He turned when he heard the sound of conversation and footsteps on the sandy path that ran parallel to the building. Two people were coming his way, and the tallest was instantly recognizable.

"Ryou," said Rand with a polite nod as their eyes met.

"You're back," said Ryou awkwardly, instead of, "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be gone for weeks hunting down the magians who attacked Darius?" Though on second thought, discretion might not have been necessary since the young man walking at Rand's side was Nicodeme. 

A brief impression of the tone of the conversation the two had been sharing rapped at the door of Ryou's memory. Nicodeme had been doing the talking, his young voice a tone lower than usual as if he'd been trying to sound older and more mature than he already was while telling Rand about some detail of his duty to their king...Ryou suddenly had the distinct impression that he'd interrupted some family time. 

"It was a very short trip to Kaides," said Rand, guessing what Ryou's remark had been about. "The thread through the maze had been cut."

"...Sorry?"

Rand gave the otherwise empty gardens a quick look through his bangs. "I'd done some investigation through agents before even setting foot there, so I knew the meeting between Yrmah and Ghan had been arranged by a chain of intermediates, only a couple of whom knew who exactly had been behind the whole thing. By the time I got to Kaides, one of these men had disappeared while the other had inconsiderately committed suicide. Not entirely of his own will," he added dryly.

"If only you'd been allowed to go directly as soon as you'd heard the news," Nicodeme muttered in a way that suggested he'd said this before. "Then you'd have been able-"

"Our master put the siege of Essin as a higher priority," Rand reminded him calmly. Nicodeme's young features tried to conceal it, but he obviously thought the whole affair could be seen as a slight of Rand's ability, and resented the Essin siege forces for having needed their hand held right after Darius's disappearance. Since the boy was still giving the sandy path at his feet a moody look, he did not see the small smile on Rand's features as the older man looked down at him. 

"You have an errand to run now, don't you?" Rand prompted.

Nicodeme turned like a soldier on parade. Ryou almost expected him to salute. "Yes, I need to go. The king will need me soon."

"Go then. We will talk later tonight," said Rand, giving the young man's shoulder a nudge. Nicodeme nodded seriously, gave Ryou a short bow and then left before Ryou could formulate a polite phrase to the essence that, if this was just an excuse, then he, Ryou, was the one intruding here and he could go on his way and leave them together.

Ryou looked at the departing boy and then up at Rand. Rand still confused Ryou, who could not conciliate the grave, thoughtful man he'd met at Essin with his former profession. Ujiie Ryou of Ujiie Standards and Trade would not want to pursue such an acquaintance, but Ujiie Ryou the newcomer to Assyria could use all the friends he could get, and he really did want to think of Rand as a friend and learn more about him. "Excuse me, Rand, I was meaning to ask you- I apologize if this is a subject I should not ask about, feel free to not answer, but something Darius said led me to believe that you and Nicodeme are related...?"

Rand looked amused at the detour in the question. "That is correct, Nicodeme is my son. This is fairly widely known now."

"I thought so," said Ryou, relieved (getting acquainted was _hard_ when one was outside of one's normal cultural scope and guidelines). "I could see the family resemblance."

"As to that, only the Gods can know," said Rand with a half shrug. "He is my adopted son."

Ryou's polite "I see," was carefully groomed to cover the shock at both the news and the casual way Rand had admitted it. That sort of information was normally kept within the direct family-...No, no, that was the world Ryou knew. Culture gap. It was equally valid for Ryou as it was for Darius...

Rand had not caught onto Ryou's confusion, he'd been following Nicodeme's departure with his eyes as if judging the march of a soldier (despite Nico wearing a short skirt and enough jewels, makeup and body paint on his copper skin to insure him a following of Ganguro addicts back in Tokyo). "It is of course possible that he carries my blood as well, but this I cannot know. His mother was a woman for several men."

Wow, that would give Ryou's mother and her exacting ability to precisely determine one's social status, quite a conundrum: for which reason should Nicodeme be most pitied and avoided, for being an orphan and adopted, or for being the son of-...of what, exactly? If Rand had meant a prostitute, he'd have said so. Though this was not what Assyrian families aspired their daughters to grow up to be, prostitution was seen as a somewhat acceptable career for a woman in Assyria, and outside of the priesthood, one of the only paths to independence from father or husband. In that context, Ryou was not sure where to fit Rand's description into his budding knowledge of Assyrian societal structure where women always seemed to exclusively belong to some man or profession alone.

"I gave Nicodeme and his younger brother an education. The other men their mother knew were not reliable, or were soldiers who died." He and Ryou had automatically continued to walk towards the garden's exit, following Nicodeme at a slower pace. "When Ydine - his mother - passed on, it made sense for him to take on my name . Unfortunately his brother, who also showed promise, was taken by a coughing sickness, but Nicodeme is healthy and adept. I am fortunate," he concluded with a simplicity that hit Ryou in one of his rare sensitive spots.

Ryou wondered if he should drop the subject, but Rand didn't seem to mind discussing it, and Ryou really did need to get a handle on Assyrian society. "If I may ask, when did you adopt him?"

"A few years ago, when he was ten."

"That old?"

Rand glanced at Ryou in surprise. "That young, you mean." 

"What? Isn't ten quite old for adoption? I thought boys are considered men by the time they're fourteen."

"That is so, but though a man may raise a boy as a son for many reasons, he will not typically adopt him until the child is near grown, or unless the patriarch is at death's door. Like that he knows the young man has the strength and health to carry the name. But I had no doubts as to Nicodeme even back then."

"What age do people traditionally adopt at then?"

"Eighteen or so."

"That old? But...we're talking about cases like yours, right? Or where there's some other family tie?"

"Family tie? Shared blood, you mean? People don't bother to adopt in that case. A bastard fathered on a concubine just needs to be recognized, and a man would let a nephew inherit his estate through his brother's bloodline. Men who adopt sons - and sometimes daughters - often do so because they knew the children's parents, but they are not related in any way. Don't your people do that?" Rand seemed to have finally come to the realization that what he was describing was alien to Ryou. 

"Uh...well, in my culture grandparents might adopt a grandchild or a grandnephew to solidify his claim and bypass inheritance laws and taxes, but to pick a total stranger- sorry, uh, no, it's not done. Not very often."

"What happens when you don't have any children, then?" 

Ryou shrugged. "That doesn't happen very often either, and then there's always distant family somewhere. It's true we don't have the infant mortality rate you have in these regions of the Outlands."

"The what?"

"Our children almost always survive to adulthood, bar accidents."

Rand chewed that over like some alien dish very foreign to his palate. "Almost all...? Ei, we are not the barbarian tribes...I always thought of our children as fortunate..."

Ryou winced. "I did not mean that as a disparagement, I-" but Rand interrupted him with a casual gesture, still deep in a train of thought he was not familiar with. 

"With the Grace of Hygeia and outside of bad flood years, I should say...I don't know if I've ever thought about it, but basing myself on the families I know, one child out of two grows to marriageable age."

"That's pretty good," said Ryou quickly, and it truly was when compared to feudal era Japan. What was it back then, one in three? One in four? And there were worse epochs than that in the Inland's checkered history. Assyria might be primitive, but that partly protected it; they did not have the crushing population densities that allowed rapid propagation of disease over the entire country, or that led to famine during times of war or agitation. And though the abilities of the Hygeians didn't measure up to a paediatric hospital unit, they still had a strong effect on survival rates, and kept the population healthier than it would otherwise be. Still, to know going into any marriage that you would likely bury half your children...it was not something Ryou could begin to imagine.

"If a man only has daughters, he can make one of their husbands his heir," Rand continued. "But the Fates do what they will. A man may marry late, or not be able to marry at all. His wife is perhaps barren and he will not put her aside. He can see his entire family taken by plague, or his sons fall in war before they have sons of their own. In those cases, to take a new son into his family is done far and wide in our countries, from lowest man to the highest. A craftsman can adopt his apprentice to take over his shop if there's no daughter available to seal the bond. Asor Par Leodides, a friend of mine who commands a unit of our regular army, adopted the young soldier who saved his life during an ambush by the Hellians. He'd lost both his sons in the war, and his daughter died of some long malady."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Rand gave him an odd look and then made the gesture with his fingers that tossed an invisible piece of sectioned thread to the wind; an Assyrian way of saying, it was decreed.

"The nobility don't need that sort of fallback though," said Ryou in an effort to get the conversation going down less grim avenues. "Since they tend to have quite a lot of children."

Rand snorted in amusement. "Yes, but what are they worth? Why go with the inbred puppies when you can adopt the wolf? I was thinking of the Galeos," he added, realizing Ryou would not get his reference.

"The Galeos? Oh, the Roman emperors?"

"That's right. Galeo the Older had two sons by his mistress and one by his wife. Not one of them was worth a bronze bit, so Appius Nautius Galeo adopted the son of his chief supporter in the senate, a close friend of his who'd been poisoned the year before, probably by Galeo's wife. She employs one of the best assassins in the business," Rand added with professional admiration. "The boy was sixteen. He chose the name Vibius Galeo Cassianus. Three years later he took the Eagle Throne, and the previous Galeo's sons didn't dare peep."

"He picked some unrelated man to be his son and heir at the expense of his own children?" Ryou asked, wrapping his head around that concept. 

"If Appius Galeo had had a daughter, Vibius Galeo would have married her, but that did not happen. It left him free to marry the daughter of the Suffete of Karnago, an advantageous alliance that serves him to this day. It was immediately obvious that Galeo the Older had chosen his heir very well. Very well indeed. But not even Galeo the Younger can hold back the tide." Rand was looking far out across the gardens now at something Ryou could not see. "It swept out from Roma Praetorium these past twenty years, now it will sweep back in again. With luck, we can assist it into sweeping out of our lands entirely, which means that next time, when Nicodeme is a father himself, or possibly a grandfather, the Romans will have to march all the way back to conquer the Pariya and Doric lands afresh, and this time we will be ready for them. I teach him the lessons we learned during our darkest days. I just hope by then we'll still have a strong king on the throne, Ashur hear me."

The silence that followed that invocation was interrupted by a peacock venting its irritation at something. Rand looked around at Ryou. "I'm sorry, I meant to ask you how you were settling in Sura."

"Oh, very well, thank you."

"I need to go run an errand myself, so we will talk some more later about how you're doing here," said Rand with the air of one who already knew Ryou would not voice a complaint even if he had a couple of knives sticking out of his back. "I understand you're in the Noble Quarters. I live in a small room off of the barracks, ask the quartermaster if you have need of me, or send one of the slaves."

Thanks, polite bows and such followed, and then Rand walked on briskly past the bristling peacock and towards the fountain and Ashur's Hall. 

Ryou looked at the gardens with something like a new eye. Nicodeme's grandchildren...Ryou, a guest and transient here, would not be around to see them fight the new surge from the Roman Empire that was so likely to come, but he found himself thinking of Sura and Assyria as an entity now, a person he was beginning to know. It surprised him, but he found out he really did care what would happen to this country in fifty years, and he echoed Rand's hopes that there would be a strong King on the throne.


	4. Sons and Lovers

Six days after Darius's return to Sura, a temple celebration in Inder's honor was organized to rejoice in the victory of the Alliance army at Essin. Ryou found himself in his finery right up a wooden podium with Darius, three feet behind Leyam and at the same level as important nobles and generals. He could only hope that the rules of precedence weren't as strict here as they'd been in feudal Japan, or some of these men would be plotting his demise to avenge themselves of this dishonor. In that context, Rand was a somewhat reassuring presence since he was standing right behind Leyam and nobody seemed to mind. Then again he might be there as a bodyguard. Even if he was not, he was not a man one would pick a fight with lightly.

Leyam was dressed in a long flowing white skirt bordered with gold, a golden halter top and a magnificent cylindrical hat of gold, gems and white silk rising almost a foot above his head. Despite the Pretty Princess getup, he talked about victory and the clash of arms with perfect aplomb, and the crowd listened respectfully. Ryou watched the faces curiously. Sure, the nobles had by now understood Leyam's game and accepted it, or at least did not dare go against him, but what did the man in the street think about it? Ryou watched the faces lifted towards Leyam...It was to be remembered that these societies were very rigid. These people were uneducated, could not read and write, and were too busy making a living to worry about the philosophy of government and the freedom of the individual. All that mattered was that Leyam was their monarch. He could point to any one of them and have them killed on the spot or made rich beyond their wildest dreams. He was the walking, talking representative of Ashur and Enlil on Earth and the heir and blood of kings. Presumably he could give this speech naked and the awe ingrained into these people from birth would still do its job. 

"Acclaim your champion!" Leyam shouted, startling Ryou out of his thoughts. The King made a flourish back towards where they were standing and Darius strode forward in his armor and his black leather collar, his strength rippling from him like a sword bared in his hand. He didn't make a speech; maybe only the King was allowed to. But he lifted one fist in the air and held it there, and the crowd, who'd been worshipfully silent until now, went wild, particularly the soldiers. 

Then the priests of Inder took over. A garlanded bull was lead out of the side door of the nearest temple and towards the public forum. Ryou gave the animal a pitying look, an old Buddhist legend about live sacrifices going through his mind, then he went back to studying his surroundings. Their group was at the foot of the flight of twelve large steps leading up to the palace's main gate, known as the God Gate in reference to the three major temples around the public square and hanging out in large balconies over the slope of the hillside. Between temples and palace was the largest open space in Sura, reserved for royal or religious functions. Otherwise it was used as a temple-sponsored flea market of amulets and holy objects as well as an open-aired tavern. It was currently jam-packed with people. Room had been cleared by soldiers next to the temples to make room for the holy rituals of celebrations. When the royal party had arrived, men had been wrestling naked there, running races, distributing good nutritional food for free (Hygeia's temple, naturally) or watching scenes re-enacting famous myths and stories of the old gods. In this land without weekends and very few holy days, people knew how to enjoy a good party when they could. 

"See the third man in Ashur's delegation?" Leyam whispered to Darius. They'd both stepped back, letting divinity now take the stand. Inder's temple was in charge of the sacrifice at Darius's request, but the three main temples of Sura - Ashur, Enlil and Hygeia - had sent representatives bedecked in rich clothes and symbols of their god. Ryou had been distractedly watching the Holy One of Hygeia absently disentangle the snake from one of her arms to let it wrap around the other. 

Darius looked towards a group of five men fifteen meters away, all of them bearing the silver horned disk of Ashur on their staffs. "Yeah. Third man- oh, is that what's-his-name? Obeor?"

"They call him Obeor-Tallit now," said Rand from where he'd stationed himself behind Leyam once more. 

"That's right," said Leyam, nodding languidly. "I had the temple hierarchy summon him to Sura, without being obvious about it of course."

Darius shaded his eyes as if the sun was bothering him, but his gaze was sharp and directed towards their left. "So that's him, hm? I'm glad I saw him. Are you going to talk to him after the ceremony?"

"I think not, not yet. Rand tells me he's a stubborn man. Hmf, wonder where he gets that from. He's working his way up the temple's chain of command on his own power. Showing him favor now might injure his pride in his achievements."

"He is a hell of a lot younger than those other cadavers."

"One day, if he makes it to the top- oops, that's my signal," Leyam added. The bull had bellowed, a horrible wet trumpeting of agony as its throat was slit. Leyam swept forward and arrived just as the creature was in its final throes. The attendant priest, a large man built like a butcher, handed him the bloodied sword. Leyam lifted it before him with dainty care for his finery, and the crowd made loud noises of approval. Ryou distracted himself from the animal's final bubbling, wheezing demise by concentrating on the man Leyam had mentioned. 

"Half brother," explained Darius, catching the direction of Ryou's glance.

Ryou stared once more as discreetly as he could, surprised. The young man was standing behind the Holy One of Ashur. They were dressed much the same, in long robes without sleeves. Obeor-Tallit was of average height with brown hair, and he was either frowning or looking very serious. It was a bit too far to tell exactly, but he did look a little bit like Leyam, just younger and with a rounder face.

"I didn't know you and Leyam had any other brothers."

"We don't. Not officially. Not that I'm official either, mind you, but Obeor was given to the temples like the others, poor bastard. I was half recognized by dent of being left intact to grow up alongside Leyam."

"...Intact?" asked Ryou who did not really want to know. 

Darius gave him a pointed look which was explanation enough. 

Ryou reminding himself - once again! - that his own culture had gotten up to a lot worse a comparatively short time ago. A few children from the wrong side of the royal beds in Japan's history had undoubtedly been deprived of life rather than of their genitals. From the little Ryou knew of temples, Obeor would have to know how to read and write to get this far up the hierarchy, and that meant he would have been sponsored and funded at his entry, undoubtedly by his father. As such, Obeor himself would not necessarily think his fate a cruel one, and compared to those born in slavery or in the harsh condition of the lower classes, it was not.

"Do you know Obeor at all?"

"Never seen him until today," Darius said with a shrug. "Leyam mentioned him awhile back, and I was curious, though not enough to seek him out. I suppose someone's told him who he is, but then again, maybe not. Our father was dead when he was, uh...Leyam, how old is Obeor?" 

"Nineteen," said Leyam, who'd just rejoined them. 

"Right. What? Nineteen, and he's already one of Ashur's Ensi? Damn, that man will go far."

"I certainly hope so. I would love to have someone of my blood as Holy One of the temple of Ashur. Come on, it's too warm to stay out here. Gods, I wish it would flood already." Leyam waved one last time and the crowd cheered long after he'd departed and reached the top of the stairs and the God Gate. Darius and Ryou trailed after him in the knot of nobles making their way back to the palace buildings. 

"How many wives did your father have?" Ryou asked curiously, which, on second thought, was not a question he'd ever thought he'd have to ask a boyfriend...

"Two when I was a child. Queen Sophrone and the Lady Baileet. The third one died childless after a bad fall when I was very young, I don't remember her."

"Then there was your mother and other concubines." Busy man. 

"He was a king," said Darius prosaically. "Come on, let's go to the atrium, there'll be something cold to drink."

"How many siblings do you have?" Ryou asked as they entered the cooler marble room a few minutes later. It was in the royal compound where only the most favored were allowed to enter, so they were alone again. The other nobles had gone to write letters and petitions in the Golden Hall, Tupila's domain, or else they were preparing for the evening's feast in the houses they lived in near the walls while they were in Sura, or walking the gardens in little coteries, plotting things. 

"Two. Obeor and some other guy who's off in a temple in Atta province. And a few girls, too. Hmm, actually just one, now that I think about it. In Ishara's temple, or married off to someone."

"So, five children, and then there's the three royal children who died. Eight in total."

"I imagine there's a few extra bastards who died as children that I never heard about. Not that many children in all, I know. My father was at war frequently, and even had he stayed at home, he was a man who controlled his appetites and his household. He was no Zomay-Kaillit, to beget a hundred sons."

"I was actually thinking that eight was a lot." Ryou's modern Japanese sensibilities certainly thought so.

"Considering how many women he could have fathered them on, no, not that much." Darius poured himself a beer from the pitcher kept cool by the waters of the fountain in the middle of the room; the atrium had only half-walls, the rest was open to whatever breeze would grace the gardens. Ryou had found the place a few days ago and it'd become his favorite room after the baths. "Ahhh, that's more like it. The weather will break tomorrow, all the augurs say so."

So does the barometer, thought Ryou, watching a few low-flying birds chasing flies amongst the palm trees. "So who is the other brother?"

"No idea. Leyam would know, but he's never mentioned him. Probably a really boring man. His mother was from Atta. They're of Babylonian descent down that way, kind of inbred and not always very bright."

"And he's also in a temple, then. Same deal as Obeor, I take it."

"Yeah, that's what happens to most bastards. Their mothers are married off to some vassal if they want to stay close to the child - most would rather stay close to the King if he's not tired of her yet. But the kid is placed in a temple. There's enough infighting amongst children of the wives, you don't need to go adding illegitimate get to the mix. Leyam's got a bastard in a temple too, but he put the kid in with Inder if that makes you feel better."

"Why would that make me feel better?"

"Because the notion of eunuchs seem to bother you a bit," said Darius with a perceptive look in Ryou's direction, "and Inder only takes whole men as his devout. Hopefully the little by-blow is growing up to be a fine warrior-priest alongside my own brat."

So instead of getting castrated and confined within the religious system, the kid was going to be sent to war as a- waitaminute.

"I'm sorry?" said Ryou, hand frozen mid-motion as he reached towards a mango floating in the water.

"Hm?"

"You said he'd be growing up alongside...?"

"Yeah, I've got one in Inder's house as well. Best place for mine, that's for sure, but Leyam's going against tradition to not-"

"You have children?"

Darius looked at him quizzically over the rim of the cup. He'd leaned a hip against the fountain's rim, ignoring the ornate bench carved out of the basin's marble. "Sure I do. I did mention they didn't cut _me_ at birth, right? You should know." There was a faint leer in his tone, which went right over Ryou's head.

"...Right. How many?"

"Two sons that I know of."

"...Oh."

"You seem surprised."

"I guess I shouldn't be. You did say you'd been a little wild in your younger days."

"The youngest is two."

"...Oh. Um, I thought you said you didn't sleep with women anymore."

"Only when nothing else is available," Darius corrected. "Or in other circumstances."

"I see...Where is he?"

"My youngest? He was born in Nairoban, a city on the Taibor five day's ride from here."

"Why is he not here in the palace? He's your son."

"That he is," said Darius with a wolfish smile, "but his mother is another man's wife."

"...Oh."

"You've been saying that a lot."

"Yes, I have, haven't I." Ryou dropped his surcoat on the bench before sitting down next to it. The breeze, normally one of the pleasures of the atrium, was absent today, but some coolness rose off the waters of the fountain. 

"His mother fostered him off somewhere before her husband came back and asked a few awkward questions. He'd been at war for a year, you see. Besides, Rand says the bastard looks like me. He keeps tracks of these things, just in case." He was looking at Ryou with his head tilted to one side. "This seems to have really surprised you. You're thirty and the oldest child, so you have sons too, right?"

"No, as a matter of fact I do not."

"Really? Ah, well, that can happen, some mares never come into season as they say-"

"I've never slept with a woman, I've never felt the compunction to. Culture gap."

"...What?"

"I'm forestalling what you're about to say."

"Oh, I know you're man enough," said Darius, one hand up in a placating gesture. The nature of his denial was enough to tell Ryou where his lover's mind had gone to, of course, but he decided not to pick up on it. "I'm sure with your lifeforce and, heh, thrust, you'll be getting sons as soon as you try. If you see some girl around here that catches your fancy, have a go at it. Just run it past me first, some flowers are only for the king to pick."

"...That is a joke, right?"

"Joke?"

"You cannot possibly be serious- I'm not about to have a one-night stand with some woman when I'm living under your roof, Darius."

Darius paused with his cup halfway to his mouth and looked once more puzzled. "Why ever not?"

The cheerful burble of the fountain suddenly sounded prickly. 

\---

"Ah, what heat!" Leyam exclaimed as he entered the atrium, fanning himself with one hand. He'd dressed down to the long skirt. Rand was following him, holding the clothes and hat his King had discarded. "But the augurs say-...what's up with you two?"

"Nothing," said Ryou with great perspicacity, but unfortunately Darius, smiling jaggedly from the other side of the fountain, did not pick up the cue or care to, and said, "My friend here wants to make a eunuch out of me."

Leyam stayed still, hand paused in mid-flap. Then he put down the scribe's table and papers he was holding on the circular bench, came around the fountain and sat down to listen with rapt attention. "Really? Do tell. Because that would be the most amazing thing I've heard since the last flood, and I've been reading reports all year of strange phenomenon that put your dog-headed creature in Palis to shame."

His reaction was the diametrical opposite of Rand's who'd glanced at Ryou, at Darius, picked up the scribe's table and papers, bowed to everyone quickly and left as silently as he'd come in.

From the way he was now frowning, Darius realized he'd made a tactical mistake, but it was too late now. Darius could be blunt, rude, brutal even, and seriously scary and forceful when he wanted to be, but Leyam was both his older brother and his king, and there was too much history between them; he was never going to be able to tell Leyam that this was none of his business.

"He says he has no intention of warming his bed with anybody else, even while I'm gone off on campaign for half a year, and he expects me to do the same," Darius finally said, still halfway between irritation and exasperated amusement at Ryou's crazy notions. 

"I was explaining that it was a sign of- of affection and respect, Darius."

Leyam's eyebrows shot up and he turned towards Ryou with a bemused smile. "Really? Well, that's not quite castration, but that's still pretty odd."

"Odd?" Ryou felt like the room was spinning around, trying to knock him down. "Faithfulness is _odd_?"

Leyam blinked. " Faithfulness? What's that got to do with anything?"

"My faith is to Leyam, my king," Darius said firmly. 

Oh great, from the puzzled look on both the brother's faces, the very notion of commitment in a relationship was foreign. "It's having several wives, mistresses, male lovers and god knows what else that'd be considered odd where I come from. In the Inlands, monogamy is the rule and not the exception." 

"Your men sleep with nothing but one single woman for their entire lives?" Darius sniffed. "That can't be healthy."

Leyam nodded wisely. "A man with only one woman dies young, it's a well-known fact. Although..." The king scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Now that I think of it, it's only the poorest who cannot afford more than one, and wouldn't they die before a rich man who doesn't have to lift a finger to put food on his table...?"

"It's still unhealthy," growled Darius.

"No, as a matter of fact it's sleeping around that's not healthy," Ryou shot back. "Or do you not care about picking up some disease?"

Leyam snickered and clapped his hands. From the look on Darius's face, that one had scored. 

"I'm no longer- I make plenty of sacrifices of wine and fruit to Ishhara, as does any soldier who's got more than the intelligence of a rabbit."

"Somehow that doesn't reassure me. Look, just to get one thing straight, are you telling me that you really are planning to-...That while we're-...I'm sorry, your maj- my King, but would it be possible to let Darius and myself discuss this privately?"

"Not for all the gold in Sura," Leyam answered brightly. 

Ryou drew in a deep breath as discreetly as possible. Fine. Fine, he could do this. "Darius, do you think you'll actually sleep with someone else while you and I are lovers?"

"I'm a man, that's what I already said."

"That's not a reason."

"It's reason enough for me"

"And you really don't mind if I sleep with some woman?"

"No. Don't you mind _not_ to? He doesn't have any sons yet, or any children at all," Darius added for Leyam's benefit. Leyam's eyebrows curved up in surprise and he gave Ryou an assessing look.

Ryou's lips pinched. He'd taken the wrong tack. In the weeks he'd been in the Outlands, he'd understood some things about these societies still clinging to antiquity. Darius was somewhat misogynistic even for his time, but men and women existed in different spheres as it were. Men could love and respect their wives, quite deeply in some cases, but women were seen as a part of that man, not wholly separate entities. No, Darius would not feel threatened by a woman, but of course that left the obvious tack.

"Then how would you feel if I slept with another man?" 

"Who?" Darius asked immediately, eyes narrowing.

Ryou pushed up his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose while Leyam burst out laughing.

Darius glared at his brother. "I merely want to know who. It seems a reasonable question. Ryou's a stranger in these lands, some bastard might be trying to take advantage."

"You mean you'd be okay with it?" Ryou asked sardonically. 

"I said I would," said Darius, though there'd been a second's pause and a scowl beforehand.

"Oh, brother, I remember a couple of dead bodies who would, if they could-"

"Leyam."

"-whisper to me how well you share."

"Those fights were about women- in fact, they were mainly about fighting. I was a kid back then, a mindless young stallion."

"No argument there." Leyam snorted away one last chuckle and then looked expectantly at Ryou, waiting for the next volley.

Ryou felt he'd scored a point with the last thrust, but not won the game by a long stretch. A small inner voice wondered if he should push this...This way of thinking was ingrained in Assyrian society. But no, he needed to explain what he expected to Darius, what to someone from most countries Inland seemed pretty obvious, if not always strictly adhered to back there either. Whether he'd get it or not was another matter, but at least Ryou should not stay silent. And...it embarrassed him privately to realize this after a lifetime of one casual non-exclusive relationship and a good number of one-night stands, but the idea of Darius sleeping with anyone else did funny things to Ryou's composure. 

"I don't understand you," Darius said, scratching his heads and making the disks in his hair clink. "You and I are both free men of equal age, why should one of us be cloven to the other?"

"It would be valid for both of us," Ryou ground out. "That's the whole point. I told you it's sign of respect-"

"How does my bedding somebody show you disrespect?"

"Because I'd not see a difference between that drunken guy you indiscriminately drag off into a corner and myself, for starters," Ryou said in the tone of one of his long-time algebra professors demolishing a student's shaky equation. 

Darius's eyes narrowed, and Ryou finally realized he'd been understood. But when his lover spoke, the previous half-amused exasperation had been replaced by cold anger. "I invited you into my home."

"What's to say you won't invite one of those others into your home?"

"Nothing," Darius conceded, "but what's bedding them got to do with that? I would have taken you back here if you'd not gotten injured at Essin and reminded me you were safer away from all this. And I wouldn't have touched you until you'd shown me you wished it that way."

Darius had a point of sorts, even though he and Ryou were still talking a little at cross-purposes. Maybe he'd meet the love of his life tumbling blindly into bed with someone, but stopping him from sleeping around would not much lessen the chance he'd eventually run into someone who could take the place of this cold and complicated Inlander with his odd ideas...

The silence was three seconds away from becoming fraught as they stared at each other across a gap that seemed wider than the atrium...but fortunately silences and Leyam did not get along very well if he wasn't their originator.

"You, not touch someone you wanted? That would have been a novelty in itself. Though of course I seem to understand that this wonder did not occur, and that it didn't take one hour after the fall of Essin for _that_ resolve to have its day."

Darius gave his brother and king a particularly heavy look. It only made Leyam laugh.

"It's what I've always told you, little brother, there's enjoying the pleasures the Gods accord to all free men and then there's going overboard. It's fit for a man to take a wife and a few lovers in his life, but there were times in your youth when I feared an entire army would not be enough. Now you're down to one phalanx, so there's hope."

"I do not and have never bedded as many as you seem keen to assign to me, My King," Darius said through gritted teeth, "and never anyone under my command. Discipline would disintegrate."

"Mmmyes, that leaves all the other units though. Well, I'm hoping some of Ryou's restraint will rub off on you, because the sign of a true man, according to the Greeks-" 

"There's nothing wrong with a man being passionate."

Leyam's eyebrows shot up. Not only was he not used to being interrupted, he'd probably not expected the interruption to come from Ryou. Neither had Darius. Neither had Ryou exactly planned this, and it left his argument in something of a mess. 

"Sorry, your majesty- my King, but as long as I've known him, Darius has always shown considerable restraint. In most circumstances. And I don't mind, ah, I mean there's nothing wrong with passion in its right place. I know what the Greeks think, but in my coun- in the Inlands," Ryou corrected himself, leaving Japan out of his globalization, "people are allowed more latitude with their individuality."

Leyam scratched his chin. "Good thing you didn't appear in Roma Praetorium with those kinds of ideas, my friend, or in some of our Greek cities in the Alliance either. So tell me, if you like my brother exercising his passion and, ah, individuality, why are you so bothered by his practicing it with others?"

"Maybe it's a passion I want to keep to myself," said Ryou with glacial steadiness.

Darius was scowling at some grapes floating in the water. That'd been an unfair thing to do to a soldier. Darius's warrior spirit was quite ready to deal with an argument or even a knife fight as par for the course, but suddenly praising him and appreciating a quality of his fierce personality that he'd been repeatedly told was not his best point was sweeping the feet out from under him. 

"Fine," he finally growled, giving a point halfway between Ryou and Leyam a stony glare. "Unlike what my brother likes to jest about, I do not need a new body for every night of the year, or indeed any night in particular. It wasn't as if I was planning on dragging someone other to my bed while you're available to me. I just don't like constraints imposed for nonsensical reasons, that's all. But if it's that important to you, and if you will abide by this as well of course, it's no real problem for me to forsake-"

Leyam burst out into a high trilling noise that an aghast Ryou could hardly believe could come from a human throat. "Wonder of wonders! Wonder of wonders! Rand!" he shouted as the latter burst through the entrance arch, alarmed; the ex-assassin had probably been hovering nearby, waiting for the pitfall conversation to end. "Contact the temples, the stables, anything and everything! We need to sacrifice a bull- no, a stallion! Make that five! Divine intervention alone can explain what I just heard my brother promise!"

"Leyam," Darius snarled. 

"Yes, my King," said Rand, leaving Ryou to hope he knew the maniac was joking. Almost certainly joking. "My King, ambassador Akal Elianth would like to meet you soon."

"Heh? Yes, but I was going to let him stew a little longer."

"I believe he's waited enough."

"Oh damn. Well I will leave you two to enjoy a fine afternoon. Ryou, I do hope you're as tough as my brother says you are, because you will need to be if you're going to keep up with him." With that, Leyam pushed himself up off the bench, grabbed his ornate hat from Rand and swept out with a regal wave and a final leer.

Ryou stood there, fists clenched on his hips, trying to remind himself that being here in this situation, talking about all this openly, was a- a privilege, an improvement on his old life of total silence and cold restraint. Right. Certainly. Totally. Besides, Leyam was the king of this realm and calling him an insensitive jerk would be lèse-majesté and punishable at the very least with a whipping. The man couldn't help himself, anyway; Ryou had already figured out that Leyam stirred up trouble and seized on any weakness with the single-mindedness of a magpie going after shiny objects. It was a by-product of his flawed upbringing, where keeping factions fighting amongst each other and too busy to worry about him had insured his eventual supremacy. 

Darius had drawn up next to Ryou while the latter was swallowing all the things he'd wanted to tell his majesty and would never be able to. "Remind me to buy Rand a seah of whatever drink he chooses," he said.

"I'll pitch in on that." 

Darius gave the exit out of the atrium a disgruntled look. "Leyam knows me as well as any man still on this earth, yet it pleases him to see me as I was back when I was seventeen."

"I know, it's a failing of big brothers that I share." And just maybe Leyam preferred to tease and pretend he was still dealing with his little brother Darius, keen for battle and pleasure in equal measure, rather than the grown man hardened by years of fighting his king's wars, the one who had grown up to earn that name, Ghan the Beast...

The lovers exchanged morose looks as the force of nature that was Leyam cleared the air and the original issue crept up on them again. 

Darius leaned back against the fountain and looked away as he grumbled, "My men are going to wonder what you did to me. If I don't sleep with someone before a battle, they'll think I'm nervous about the coming day."

"If it's just sleeping, I don't mind. I mean sleeping." After all, the nights camping out could get cold, and he and Darius had shared a bed for ages quite innocently. So did many of the Hounds who did not have a relationship beyond that of good friends.

"Do you mean that?"

Ryou gave him an interrogative look, puzzled by the intensity behind the question. "Why?"

"Well, I know a couple of friends who'd warm my blankets without blabbing later that we'd done nothing more than a couple of sisters would."

Ryou couldn't help a short snort of laughter, though there was only a couple of inches of humor in the well. "Is image that important to you?"

"It's my custom," Darius explained with a frown. "That's very important to soldiers. I don't mean the holy rituals like putting my arrows on Inder's altar the night before the battle. If I didn't do that, not a single man under my command would march the next day. But it's the little things, like Jexen and Kaibaroses always having a game of dice, and Terentius wrapping up the war council early so he can have a good night's sleep. It's about confidence, you see? If I don't take someone to my bed, the men will think I'm either sick or too worried to get my blood up. Worse, they'll think it a bad omen. You've never been in a real battle. When two armies match in size and prowess, then everything else, from the whims of the Gods to the morale of the horse-holder's boy, is going to come into play and tip the scale."

He was perfectly serious...Ryou had been getting an education in soldiers as well as everything else; he knew they were as a whole terribly superstitious. These 'customs' Darius talked of would be like the good luck routines of high level sportsmen, only in this case they were there to spare them fatal consequences. 

"I think I understand. Okay, if it's that important, far be it from me to stop you from keeping up appearances."

"You don't mind that?

"No, I guess I don't." After all, since it was customary - more customary than keeping faith between men it seemed - nobody would make assumptions about Darius's or Ryou's availability on that basis alone. 

His concession earned him a weighing gaze. "Others will think I'm getting laid."

"I don't really care what others think."

The corner of Darius's mouth crooked into a smile. "That's what I thought. Ei, I still don't understand any of this...but fine, we are agreed on the matter. Keep in mind, I will be gone for months at a time after the floods, once the barley is in the ground and the armies back on campaign again."

"That's great, I love to travel."

Darius gave him a troubled look. "You're not a warrior, Ryou."

"Correct. So I'll be somewhere in the back of the army with the Hygeians and cooks and things, out of your way and just close enough to help if some Per Gathas impostors show up again."

"That is not the place for a free man," Darius told him crisply.

"Oh? And staying here waiting for you to come back, assuming you do, _is_?" asked Ryou in a measured tone that managed to turn the heat in the atrium down to tepid, and maybe even cool. 

Darius just reached over and gently slapped Ryou's cheek, making Ryou blink. "I meant that you should be at the heart of the effort, standing with the general and his staff. Maybe, as Leyam says, that restraint of yours will rub off. There's quite a few hotheads amongst the Alliance, and we cannot afford mistakes now. It's still a dangerous position; I would rather you stay here in Sura out of harm's way, as you are not involved in these wars and do not possess the skills to defend yourself if the day goes against us and a retreat turns to a rout. But I was not going to insult you with the suggestion that you wait for me while weaving a tapestry of my deeds, because then I know you really would castrate me." 

"Huh-uh." Ryou caught the hand that'd lingered on his cheek. "Darius, do you understand why I'm asking you to do this? I don't want to take away from you as a man, I-" 

"Yeah, yeah," Darius said, his eyes falling to where his thumb was brushing Ryou's lips. "I get it. Hell, if nothing else, I'm a grown man who has left the callowness of youth far behind, it's well time I became a little more Greek in my pleasures."

Ryou's lips twitched beneath the caress. "Just not too much."

"Little chance of that."

Ryou let himself be drawn into the brief kiss. There were chances that Darius would stray a little in the future; generations of ingrained cultural habit did not change that easily. But bar an occasional drunken post-battle tumble, he was willing to try, which was something of a concession right there. It wasn't as if Ryou had any other experience of a long-term relationship to compare all this to. Assyria and its cousin countries had an odd view of male lovers, he knew that much. Friendship stronger than the bonds of man and wife, a friendship that could include sex as well as some awfully romantic declarations of love and dramatic actions to match, yet still just friendship...But Darius was willing to enter into a bond that Ryou was willing to call being lovers, and that was enough for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of this short arc of Ryou getting used to Sura and Assyrian customs. Next up is another short arc where things get magical, dangerous and weird again.


End file.
